Two Bards: The Forum!

Myld'redd gulped down tears as her brother winged his way up the stone steps to the platform their mother waited on.

She’d never been quite as enthusiastic as Gawhg about racing - he’d always thrived under the attention, and loved it when races went rough - but she hadn’t been about to let him go off alone the night they’d left their mother’s house. Twins have only happened four times before in our race’s history, their mother had told them once when they were very young, so you two are very, very special and you need to look out for each other. Always.

Myld'redd had suspected that pronouncement was brought on by the fact that their mother had taken to drinking after the loss of their father and couldn’t always take care of what they needed, but she never speculated out loud and simply took her mother’s advice seriously. She was the the eldest, first out of her shell by almost an hour, and she’d loved Gawhg with all her heart when she’d first seen his little head with its ridiculously oversized tusks peek out from under a shell fragment that had stuck to the top of his noggin. They’d been inseparable ever since, whether it was sleeping together under their mother’s warm wings or gallivanting in the area around their home while their mother was away getting food and bog-wine. No matter where Gawhg went, Myld'redd followed.

They’d never met their father; they hadn’t been out of the shell but an hour or two when the news had arrived that he’d died. A strange little human had come, with a wagon and a large trunk and spoken to their mother outside for a few minutes before their mother had made the worst sound Myld'redd had ever heard; a sort of keening wail that had been loud enough to pierce through thick walls and high enough to waver in and out of hearing. Their mother had come back inside carrying the chest - it had been bigger than Myld'redd at the time, though it had looked terribly small in their mother’s claws - and dripping gore from her jaws, and then gotten very drunk on bog-wine. She’d spent the next many hours telling them about their father, how wonderful he had been, how caring, how he had wanted only the best for his family.

It had been the first and last time their mother had spoken about their father, but it had left an impression on the two of them and both had wanted to know more. Speaking humanish tongues was out of the question - their jaws just didn’t move the right way - but the languages weren’t difficult to learn just by listening and Myld'redd and Gawhg had spent hours eavesdropping from the rooftops of the city to hear what they could about their father. Speed Demon, the other racers had called him, and apparently he’d won a surprising number of times - most of the racers were either dead or permanently crippled by their third race, but their father had won four times and raced more than twelve! The crowd had loved him, and they often heard stories that bemoaned his absence.

It was those stories that had lit a Fire inside Gawhg. His head had been filled with visions of following in their father’s claw marks, and making it big at the colosseum. Myld'redd couldn’t forget the noise their mother had made when she’d been told their father had died, and could see the near-perpetual stupor their mother lived in as she consumed whole barrels of bog-wine at a time, but Gawhg had been very persuasive. He finally managed to convince her nearly a year ago, and they’d snuck out of the house with a note left for their mother as to where they’d gone.

They hadn’t heard anything from her since. She’d never come to watch them race, she’d never sent them any messages or acknowledgements - if they hadn’t lived with her all their lives, it would be hard to know that they had a mother. Gawhg had been hurt, Myld'redd knew her brother well enough to see through his blunder and bluster, and Myld'redd hadn’t been overly happy about it herself. Still, the crowds loved them - a perfectly matched pair of black dragons, even though neither of them were old enough to have figured out how to spit acid yet, was a powerful draw and the races the competed in were always well-attended. It couldn’t replace the absence their mother had left in their lives, but it made bearing it a little easier.

And so they’d raced - rarely more than once a month, as the Powers That Be had deemed them exotic enough to keep only for highlight races - and talked to the other chariot pullers. The skeleton unicorns refused to speak to them at all, but the thunder lizards and reaverbirds were friendly enough, and they learned a great deal.

They hadn’t been told much about the race they’d just lost, but the thunder lizards pulling the Cold Iron cart had been bubbling about how this race was part of a Gauntlet challenge, and they their charioteers were the challengers set to try and win. Neither Myld'redd nor Gawhg had known what a Gauntlet challenge was, but they’d been set to do nothing less than their absolute best. Their charioteers were some vampires they’d raced with before, and they’d both been pretty confident about their chances.

And then the human had jumped on Gawhg.

Tears began leaking from Myld'redd’s eyes as she jumped up the last few stairs that separated her from her mother. It had been a very long time since any humans had bothered to speak to them directly, and the soft kindness of that human’s words had struck a chord. It’d been so long since she’d bothered to look at the family seating for the racers that she hadn’t realized her mother was here for the first time, until he’d said something. There was something sad about his kindness, too, something wistful like he wished his own family had shown up and Myld'redd couldn’t blame him for that as she bounded over to her mother with Gawhg hot on her heels.

“Mother! You’re here!” she roared, not caring about the other people who flinched away from the noise. She felt the impact through her mother’s hide as her brother joined them with a happy roar of his own, and for a moment all was right in the world as their mother’s wings spread over both of them. They no longer fit under her wings, not wholly, but it didn’t matter. There mother was alive, and she was warm, and she was here.

Then details started intruding. No longer was their mother’s hide soft and sleek; Myld'redd could feels bones poking into her where she was pressed against her mother’s side. Large patches of scales had given way to dry, leathery skin, and her joints popped as she shifted to let her two children get more comfortably situated. Her eyes bulged out against the tight skin around them, any fat deposits that might once have smoothed out the bumps now completely gone and her hide drawn tight around the odd contours of the skull beneath.

Gawhg apparently saw the same things Myld'redd did, his high-pitched babbling a sign of his panic. “I’m sorry mother, so sorry - I wanted to race to honor father’s memory, and I dragged Myld'redd into it. It’s all my fault, we didn’t mean - I’m sorry,” he sniffled as he buried his face against her side, and their mother nuzzled him gently like she had so many times before.

“Sshhhhm shhhhh it’s all right. I’m glad you’re all right; I was so, so worried you’d end up dead in a ditch, I’m so proud you’ve come to your senses.” Her voice was warm and soothing, just like it had been so many times before and Myld'redd let it wash over her as she cuddled close to the painfully bony form of her mother.

“We’ll never race again mother, we promise. We can all go home and live together like father would have wanted us to,” Myld'redd croaked through her tears, Gawhg nodding along rapidly even as his own eyes brimmed.

Myld'redd froze when she felt her mother sigh deeply, almost seeming to collapse in on herself as the air rushed out of her. “I’m afraid that may no longer be possible,” she said, avoiding both their eyes.

Myld'redd and Gawhg exchanged a glance, puzzled, and Gawhg asked the question on both their minds. “Why is that, mother?” Myld'redd simply cuddled closer, hoping that her warmth would drive some of the sadness out of their mother’s eyes.

“I was…not doing well, after you two left. I couldn’t, couldn’t bear the thought my two wonderful dragonets dying for the delight of some humans, and I couldn’t bear to watch and make sure you two were okay. I….I made a series of…unwise decisions, and…” she trailed off and crumpled even further, her nearly-negligible weight now resting almost wholly on Myld'redd’s shoulders.

She bore it gladly, remembering so many times when she’d been younger and her mother had been the one bearing her up - when her mother wasn’t too drunk to stand, anyway. And even when she had been, she always had a wing and a warm flank and a kind word for her two children. If her mother needed help now, it was up to the two of them to help her.

Gawhg exchanged a glance with Myld'redd, her twin having a glint in his eye that she knew so well. They’d been inseparable growing up, and working together in the arena had done nothing to dull the way their minds worked in parallel. Between the two of them they didn’t have that much money - only one winner’s purse from a low-stakes race - but they had something, and that might just be enough.

“That human - the one who helped us - I think he’s competing again,” Gawhg said, intensity in both his gaze and voice. “The lizards said something about the Gauntlet being three events. Nobody else has ever managed to take out both other chariots and win before, and I have no doubt that if he can do that then he can definitely win this next event. I know a guy, and we’ll hopefully make enough to get our home back for you mother.”

“And be a family again,” added Myld'redd firmly, and her mother tightened her wings around them both.

“I’m so proud of both of you - and I think your father would have been too,” she said. Tears spilled up out of her eyes as Gawhg gently extracted himself and took wing to find the saw-billed reaverbird who served as the bookie for the non-humans of the colosseum.

Myld'redd watched him go as she stayed huddled close to their mother, who was now openly weeping, and spared a brief prayer to the Continuum for the little human who’d helped them so much. She wish him health, and happiness, and the joy of reuniting with his own family that he’d so generously gifted them with. May he live long and know their love as well as his own, she added mentally, and wound her tail around her mother’s in a warm embrace.

They were going to be okay.

Amelia marked her place in the enormous book in front of her with a silk bookmark before leaning back in her chair and removing her glasses to rub at the bridge of her nose.

Things had been…tense since the last time she’d talked to Bryn. It wasn’t just the research Amelia had undertaken at the behest of her daughter, though that was part of it; the library was full of old and unsettling tomes, and many of them had been damaged in the Great War that had destroyed the old palace. The new assistant librarians Bryn had recruited on her last visit home had been of great assistance with the research, but work still progressed slowly.

No, it was the citizens of the Fire planet themselves who were the main source of the tension that crackled in the air like static. Amelia had been the Summoner for many years, true, but there were still people alive who remembered what life had been like under the thumb of her mother and grandmother. They remembered the inexplicable bursts of temper, the wild outpouring of anger that could and had resulted in summary immolations; Amelia had held a town meeting, where she put forth her reasons for the incident in the throne room, and answered their questions as best she could but…Their trust had been broken. It was in the way they moved through the halls of the palace, and the way the streets cleared whenever she went through the city to hear the grievances of the citizens. The way mothers pulled curious children into doorways to shield them from her, and shopkeepers greeted her with appalling obsequiousness where before they would have greeted her as a beloved ruler. Fear haunted the streets now, and all Amelia could do to allay it was her best to rule in a kind and just manner - erring on the side of kindness whenever possible.

If there was one positive side effect - the silver lining on the troubles that hung like a heavy bank of ashy smoke over the city - it was that Amelia now had time to devote to her daughter’s request. She still didn’t have a new parallel, but the number of formally written complaints to cross her desk in the morning had substantially decreased. The bills of lading were all punctiliously correct, and the birth and death notices no longer included invitations to namedays and wakes. Her people feared to draw her attention, and as much as that hurt in ways she hadn’t expected, it did mean she had some spare time in the evenings now to read through the old tomes and see if any of them mentioned anything about the Order Parallel.

Amelia frowned as she moved her hand up to rub at her eyes. It had been two months now since she’d sent the news of Variq’s death to the Order. His ashes still rested in a small, unmarked urn on her desk; as a faithful parallel of many years, he deserved a spot in the family vault but as a confirmed traitor of a few months she should have scattered him on the breeze to be lost in the ever-shifting sands. She hadn’t yet decided what his final fate would be; the man had been Bryn’s family as much as he had been hers, and she would postpone judgement until her daughter had a chance to make her opinion known. It could wait until after all the planets were freed.

Still, the fact remained that Cylvahl Cylesso had not responded to any of her messages. Not the one about Variq, or the one requesting new parallel candidates, or even the one carefully and politely requesting any information on the history of the Order itself. She’d tried reaching out to the new Bloom Summoner, but they hadn’t responded to any of her messages either and the Water Summoner had been a bastard to get hold of even when times were not as fraught as they were now. In desperation she’d reached out to The Company to see if they would pass a message along, but all their ships and equipment were scattered from here to the edge of the Continuum and she’d been bounced through fifteen relays before being fobbed off with a politely worded we’ll pass it along if we find the time, now please stop asking.

Amelia put her glasses back on with a sigh. Whatever the troubles Cylvahl Cylesso faced, she’d done all she could about the situation. Leaning forward, she removed her bookmark and was preparing to return to the difficult work of deciphering the ancient text - apparently the author had been paid by the word; they always used fifteen of them when one would have sufficed - when a frisson pulsed along the currents of the vast sea that was the Continuum.

She sat up straight and frowned; the currents of the Continuum were nothing like they’d been before the Event, but Fire, Bloom, and Water had all been restored to their previous intensities if not their previous flow patterns. All the rest were mere trickles, the ebbs and flows comprised mostly of whatever dribs and drabs occurred naturally within the freed planets and not really worth considering.

The frisson happened again, and this time Amelia could see the Fire of her planet waver like a candle in a soft breeze. It was just a little - more a flicker than a gutter - but the sight struck her to her core. The last time she’d seen the wellspring of Fire in the Continuum do that, it had been when Variq had started to act strangely just after the Event. Fire had flickered then as well, its intensity reduced by what she now knew to have been a hole in the world swallowing it up. Bryn had sealed that breach so well that not even a scar of it remained on the planet, but if someone had found a way to re-open it…

She’d brought in the Tine of the wastes to deal with the city Tine who had bowed to Variq’s leadership. Zeem had been amenable, once he’d heard what had happened, and in one riotous night they’d cleared out all the city Tine. He’d said something about sending them to begin the cycle anew, but she hadn’t had the time to deal with it then because he’d also mentioned that some had escaped out into the desert. If one of them had found a way to re-open a wound in the sky, she needed to know when and how yesterday.

A third frisson pulsed, stronger than the other two, and Amelia frowned. This didn’t quite feel local. In fact, if she looked at the waves it made in the Continuum, it almost looked like it was coming from the Blight planet.

Where Bryn was now.

Dread was a heavy weight in her gut as Amelia reached over to push the quick-call button on the vidcomm nearby. Once upon a time, that button would have instantly connected her to Variq in his office. No longer; she’d rebound it to Haven’s comm signal after Bryn had…after Bryn had gotten off the Water planet and had had no reason to change it since. The screen flicked on to the connecting now image, and after a few moments XK-37 came into view. The robot was currently serving as communications officer aboard Haven; they were calm and polite, and effortlessly competent in a way that reminded her of Variq in his heyday. She’d strongly considered buying a work contract for the ‘bot if the Order Parallel never got back to her; even with her reduced workload, she could still use the help.

“Summoner Amelia,” XK-37 said politely, helm bobbing in a polite half-bow that Amelia returned.

“Exkay. I need to speak with my daughter, please.” Another frisson ran through the Continuum, and her concern intensified. “Both audio and video.”

XK-37 worked at a few controls that were offscreen, and Amelia had the distinct impression of surprise radiating from the robot - though their expression never changed. “Your daughter is not presently aboard the Haven; however, power fluctuations in the shield around the Blight planet has made communication possible with the ground team. I can try to connect you, if you like.” They looked faintly pained as another readout flashed a red light in their optics. “Though I cannot, unfortunately, guarantee call quality.”

Amelia nodded, leaning back in her chair. “Whatever you can do, I would be most grateful Exkay. I cannot blame you for any call distortions that are outside your realm of control.”

XK-37 gave another bow - this one distinctly pleased - and the screen once again flickered to the connecting now image.

It stayed on that image for several minutes, long enough that Amelia returned to her reading. The passage she was currently trying to decipher seemed to be speaking about Summoners past, and the relationship they’d had to their parallels. And in this way didst the summon'rs of fusty taketh ‘pon themselves trustw'rthy leigemen to balance and focus of their pow'rs; still, some wast not satisfyed with m’re balance, and did seek to bindeth to themselves s'rvants of pow'r, yond those gents couldst taketh through the bond and useth f'r their owneth evil purposes.

“Hi mom!”

The slightly-muffled voice of her daughter rang out in the small library, and Amelia looked up into….the top half of her daughter’s face. Strange. Still, she couldn’t help the overwhelming sense of relief that coursed through her. Bryn appeared to be alive and relatively unharmed; the situation couldn’t be too dire yet.

“Bryn! Bryn, is everything okay?”

“Um. Uh. Ummmm…No. Yeah, yeah…I don’t know.”

Amelia could feel concern etch itself across her brow. Bryn wouldn’t take her hand off the bottom half of her face, which accounted for the slight muffling, but it was odd. Bryn had been raised to be the next Summoner of the Fire planet, and had an impeccable set of manners. She normally used rudeness to enforce her point - to get the last word, to show her displeasure what whatever was going on, and any number of other petty reasons. For her to be rude now didn’t make sense.

“What’s wrong?”

“Things are weird down here, I don’t like it.” Bryn’s voice was high in a way that Amelia hadn’t heard since she’d grown out of her whining phase several years ago.

“Get your hand away from your face while you’re speaking to me; it’s bad manners and I raised you better than that. You’re a Summoner.” Amelia’s voice cracked out slightly more harshly than she’d intended, but heavy dread was making a stone-like reappearance in her gut. At least her daughter didn’t argue; Bryn pulled her hand away from her face with an exasperated eyeroll and a pout hovering around her lips that Amelia elected to ignore. The news she had to impart was too important. “Bryn, I just felt a bizarre disturbance in the magic of the Fire planet. I feel like my powers are lessening - it’s really very minor, but I’ve never really felt anything like it except when that rift was open on this planet.” She could see Bryn alternately pursing her lips and chewing on them - an odd combination. “Are you okay?”

“Yr pwrs r lessning?” Bryn asked, keeping her lips nearly all the way closed.

Amelia frowned. “A little bit. What is wrong with you?” It was an extremely rude question, but with all the current events it slipped out almost without her consent and with more force than she’d meant to use. Bryn was acting far too strangely - almost like the time she’d brought home a lamb from one of the farms and endeavored to keep it hidden in her room. Amelia knew she was hiding something, and she dreaded to find out what. “Is everything okay?”

“Noooo I have vampire teeth,” Bryn wailed, opening her mouth fully for the first time since the call had started.

“By the Continuum!” The oath was drawn almost involuntarily from the older Summoner as bright white fangs caught whatever light was in the room her daughter stood in. Each one was almost a quarter-inch long, extending past the line of her normal teeth and wickedly sharp.

“Mom, it suuuuucks! And I ate Danny Delvido’s leg!” Big fat tears slid down Bryn’s face as she looked at her mother with an expression Amelia knew so well. She’d seen it dozens of times before, when Bryn’s insatiable curiosity had mixed with her natural friendliness and headstrong inclination to get her into trouble that only her mother could get her out of.

But this time Amelia was worlds away, and there was nothing she could do over a vidcomm call, no magic she had that could reach so far and lift the curse on her daughter.

“Oh Bryn…” Her voice was soft as her heart broke, just a little. Her little girl was in trouble, and was asking for her help, and there was nothing she could do. Then the rest of Bryn’s words caught up to her. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve created a thrall,” she definitely did not beg. Thralls were anchors for the vampire curse, and creating one would make it that much harder to pull the curse out of Bryn. She looked sharply at her daughter. “Are you creating thralls? Are you a vampiress lor- lady?”

Bryn looked horrified. “No, no there was like, a vampire that popped out at the beginning of this mission, and I tried to like, distract it so it didn’t eat my friends and then it bit me and now I’m stuck cursed as a vampire and if I don’t get any blood really soon I don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s a nightmare!” She huffed a little, then grimaced. “And I can’t talk properly!”

“Truly, the least of your worries Bryn,” Amelia replied absently as her mind raced. Vampires didn’t tend to lurk in swamps; they needed human blood to continue their existence and so stayed near their source of sustenance. Plus most of them were comfort-loving creatures that loved the convenience of the city. Or so she’d read in one of her previous books, though the section on vampires had been small. It had talked more about the psycho-magical bonds between vampire and thrall, and compared it to the type of bond a trained parallel could establish with a Summoner - which was why she’d even glanced through it in the first place. “Look, I didn’t feel the need to warn you about vampires because their population has been relatively small on that planet for hundreds of years.”

The Blight planet had been inimical to all forms of life for as long as Amelia had been Summoner; when the vampires’ food source - humans - had begun to die out, their numbers had dwindled as well until maybe a few dozen remained on the entire planet. Caepio had complained of them at the last Council meeting, but his concerns had been dismissed by the very reasonable argument that only robots flew the cargo haulers to his planet anyway and they were immune to vampirism and vampire magic. Caepio hadn’t been happy, but the motion to eradicate them had been tabled in favor of negotiations over food exports from the Bloom planet and it hadn’t come up again.

“Yeah, we ran into a couple more - one of them had a love affair with a werewolf! Shit’s weird down here.”

“Werewolf!” Amelia couldn’t even bring herself to chide Bryn over her choice of language. If vampires were rare, werewolves were extinct. They hadn’t been a major predator of humans, but when the swamps overtook the farms the last of the packs had disappeared into the muck and nobody had heard of any sightings since. For even one to show up now - Amelia could only be glad that none of Bryn’s friends had been injured. Lycanthropy was much harder to get rid of than vampirism was, and harder on the infected person according to the stories. Those 'cured’ of lycanthropy had reported strange symptoms for years afterward, and often underwent extreme shifts in personality.

Bryn seemed morbidly delighted by her mother’s surprise. “Yeah, we saw a werewolf too. And, uhm, uh, skeleton unicorns, and those zappy crocodile things,” Amelia opened her mouth to interject but Bryn plowed forward, oblivious “can’t remember what they’re called - just a whole bunch of stuff. It’s weird. Caepio has gone off the rails, completely off the rails. He is draining all the power from the planet, I don’t know where it’s going. And he’s, he’s made things better, and then he’s hiding in this dungeon-pit-thing, and he’s making us do all these ten trials to try and gain immortality to beat him. I don’t know what to do, I mean we’re just going with it. We did some WWE-style wrestling.” Bryn finally ran out of steam, and the silence hung heavy between them for a few moments.

Amelia sat up and carefully took off her glasses to set them down beside the book she’d been reading. “Bryn, you’ve just told me about a lot of different things - most of which are pretty wild.” Bryn laughed and ducked her head, but Amelia carried on without allowing her time to interrupt. “I am going to need time to digest most of it.”

“Okay,” Bryn said quietly, looking slightly dismayed.

“If there are cursed creatures - multiple of them - something is definitely happening and Caepio must be behind it.” Caepio wasn’t particularly powerful as far as Summoners went - his powers took time to work, and frequently did so at an underwhelming level - but he was still leagues better than any non-Summoner magic users that the Blight planet had ever produced.

“There are very few on Blight who can use magic at all. Summoners are usually…Their families are usually small because they…” Planets only had so much magic they could give, and Summoners always bred true. She’d been very lucky to carry Bryn to term; Summoners needed magic to survive just as much as they needed food or air and if there wasn’t enough magic to go around it always went to the oldest Summoner first.

Still, Bryn - hopefully - wouldn’t need to worry about it any time soon. “It doesn’t matter. Look, what’s important is - if Caepio is draining the power from the planet, he might be under the influence of that force. The one that took over…” She couldn’t say his name, even now; the wound was still too fresh. “…my Parallel.” She resolutely did not look over to where the small urn gleamed dully in the low light. “Could Caepio be under the influence of this…Malice?”

Bryn’s brows came together as a thoughtful expression crossed her face. “I don’t…I don’t think so. From what I understand, Caepio blocked the Malice, and the Malice is really upset about it.”

That statement was disturbing on several levels. How did her daughter know that the Malice was upset about anything? Was she speaking to it? Was it trying to do things to her or her friends? Then, too, there was the implication that Caepio had resisted the Malice - that the Malice resistible, even by someone like Ezra Caepio. Her eyes slid over to the little urn on her desk. Variq had been twice the man Caepio was; how come he had succumbed? What had the Malice done to him to corrupt him so?

She pushed the thought away and focused back on Bryn. “Well, whatever he’s doing is affecting magic on a very large scale. If we’re feeling it here on this planet, he might’ve tapped into a primary current of the -” she saw Bryn shaking her head in confusion and paused to explain. “The way that the Continuum spreads energy through the system.” Bryn nodded, and Amelia nodded back. “Now tell me - these trials? Caepio is running these trials?”

Bryn shook her head. “No, the ghost of Slakta…” Amelia stopped listening, the icy hand of terror suddenly gripping her heart tight. Slakta? Her daughter was dealing with the ghost of Slakta the Insidious??

“The ghost of Slakta??” Amelia gasped, horror in her voice, and Bryn looked her with a puzzled expression.

“Yes, and she is losing it.”

“Slakta the Insidious???”

Bryn nodded, slowly. “That fits.”

Amelia leaned toward the vidscreen, suddenly desperate in wishing she could fly right through it to Bryn’s side. The thought of her daughter near that monster was enough to make her - her, the Summoner of the Fire planet - go cold. “Bryn, whatever you’re doing, whatever you think Slakta is doing, you must be very careful. Slakta ruled Blight - I’ve only read about this, we’ve only read about this. This is taught to everyone in our line as an example of what not to do to your people. Slakta entangled herself with dark magic and was able to keep the planetship of Blight underneath her power for centuries. She terrorized that planet. Whatever is going on on that planet, ultimately is due to decisions she made hundreds of years ago that were so devastating they’ve never been able to turn it back around. Slakta the Insidious is a famous - infamous - necromancer. One of the most powerful Summoners ever. She was defeated a long time ago by the other four members of the Council at the time combined - three of whom died in the attempt. Whatever this ghost is doing, you must. Not. Trust. It.”

Bryn seemed stunned, sputtering for a few moments before she could respond. “Okay, but - but - but - but - ” she huffed in frustration in a way that Amelia had seen hundreds of times before but which somehow had never been this endearing. “Apparently we have to go through her to get to Caepio. So,” she ended with a helpless shrug, and Amelia sighed.

“Okay. That - that sucks.”

“Yup.”

She couldn’t protect her daughter from the conniving ghost of possibly the most evil Summoner to ever have lived, so Amelia focused on the things that could be fixed as her brain went on autopilot. “Look, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, but being a vampire is pretty bad Bryn. And very unbecoming, especially for someone of our standing.” They were Fire Summoners; light was their element, and their night was only a fraction of other planets’. Being a vampire Fire Summoner was a ludicrous idea at best. “And so I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if you dealt with it rather quickly. And if Slakta is making you gather magical trinkets, I’m sure any number of them would be powerful enough to fuel a ritual to reverse your curse.”

Bryn looked a little dismayed, hand creeping up to cover her mouth again. “Any one - I don’t have magic any more, so I have to refer to Rex our cleric or Sam our wizard.” Amelia blinked as Bryn looked off camera for a moment before looking back. “Sam says hi, by the way.”

“Oh!” Good manners kicked in even as she tried to shake herself out of the shock that hearing her precious daughter was working WITH the Necromancer Slakta had sent her into. “Tell him I said hello.”

“I will.”

Amelia took a deep breath and straightened up, meeting Bryn’s eyes squarely through the small screen. Her daughter was beautiful, willful, and smart as a whipcrack. She would be okay. “Bryn, I - I’ve seen what you can do. You’ve freed planets.” And the thought still made her heart swell with pride. “I cannot tell you how to - do the day to day work of an adventuring Summoner who’s saving places, okay? That’s something that you’re going to have to figure out on your own."

Other parents had told her that there were some things that were beyond a parent’s ability to teach their child, and while Amelia was reasonably certain they hadn’t meant this, she was equally certain she knew the pain they’d spoken of at not being able to help when her child was suffering. "But you CANNOT trust Slakta.”

A curl of static obscured Bryn’s expression briefly. “Okay.”

“I wish you -”

The call died in a burst of static.

“-would come home safe.” Amelia slumped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her daughter was cursed with vampirism. Her daughter was trapped in a room with the most evil Summoner ever to have lived. Her daughter couldn’t access magic right now. Her daughter had fought monsters and lived.

Amelia straightened again. She couldn’t go to the Blight planet and help her daughter directly, but there were other things she could do. Reaching out, she pulled a pad of paper close and began composing a message the Summoner of the Bloom planet could not afford to ignore. If Slakta got loose again, it was their duty to stop her.

No matter the cost.

Tag was silent for a long moment as Slakta floated away to fiddle with something on her cart.

He’d known, intellectually, that the trials would be dangerous. None of the rifts they’d closed so far had been defended by anything less than deadly force - Bryn had died on the Water planet, though his mind shied away from the thought. And yet some small part of him had thought that the memories would be just that; memories. Thoughts of the distant past, just shades of things that had already happened. Tag had a great deal of experience in sifting through other peoples’ thoughts, and he’d never been harmed by what he’d found - it was only his own memories that impaled him like spikes, and left him writhing on the hot skewers.

The only exception had been F̸̧̧̈̄̈̚i̴̧̤̥̱̪̹̱̪͇͛͆̾̉̽̆̉̅̽͛̓͊̈͒́̾̇̕ņ̴̣̰͍͓̝̤͙̾̓̾̏̈͊̐̃͊̏̈̑̈̐͋̓̚͝͝b̶̨̛̠̹̯̲͓̘̜̠͇͖̲̱̗̀͂̈̆̑̊́̂͘̕͝a̶̧͍̟͍̮͈̙̞̲̟͍͇͇̺̮̪̒̇̐̂̎̈́̅̈́̆̽͝ç̸͔̳̣̠͎̗̝̻͓̝̊̔̅̓̐̾͛͐̇͗̍͘͜͝͝͝h̵̢̢̛͈̩̪̩̗͙͙̗͎̟͓̑́̌̋̎̔̏̌͌̈́͗́́̅͌̂́͘͝͝ - touching the dead parallel’s memories had been…painful. Excruciating was too strong a word, and yet that was the kind of pain that they had been made of. The memories themselves had been twisted and distorted by centuries of necromancy; Tag was pretty sure the ghost hadn’t had any clearer views of the memories than Tag himself had gotten. Tag couldn’t be sure if it was the necromancy or something else, but those memories had had sharp edges that lingered in the back of his mind if he thought about them for too long.

But this…Tag let his eyes slide over to where Bryn was rubbing at her side and wincing. Scorch marks on the deep red armor - the same color as the robes she had been wearing when they came to this Continuum-forsaken place - lead in crazed lines to spiral burns that started where the armor stopped. They oozed a clear, if slightly yellowish, fluid, and he couldn’t help but wince in sympathy when a too-rough touch brought forth another dribble. The Mare’s magic had been much more powerful than any of them were expecting, even after the druid had warned them, and Bryn had taken the brunt of it.

Tag flinched away from thoughts of the druid and what her final fate had been, and walked over to Bryn like he could escape his thoughts by moving while fishing around in his satchel. A few stray coins, a knife he was pretty sure wasn’t one he’d started with, a few other odds and ends…his hand closed on the cold glass of the bottle just as he got to Bryn’s side, and he pulled it out to offer it to his Summoner.

“Um, if you want, Bryn…I-I do have a health potion.” He noticed Rex looking their way with an expression he couldn’t quite parse on her face, and bobbed a quick nod at her. “Rex, obviously I don’t mean to step on your toes, I know that you’re a skilled healer, but I don’t know if those are, uhm, y'know, things you wanna save up on.”

Rex’s expression shifted to something more thoughtful as Bryn took the health potion out of his hands, and Tag felt a sickening kind of dread in his gut. There was only one thing he could think of that might bring that expression to her face; him exploding at the druid in the swamp. He’d reacted more than acted, and while she had been rude that druid certainly hadn’t deserved what he’d done to her.

Tag let his gaze slide away from Rex’s face. “I’m a little embarrassed about…my behaviour and I don’t know that we need to talk about it but,” he waved away the twin expressions of concern both Bryn and Rex were levelling at him now, and cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m just trying to get my head in the game.” He cudgeled his mind, trying desperately to come up with something to say next and finding nothing, memories that lurked just out of sight to ambush him chasing away words like a cat after birds. “Um. So.”

Bryn paused, her hand on the cork of the potion bottle like she’d been just about to open it. She looked over at Tag, with a worried little furrow in her brow that Tag felt immediately ashamed of putting there. “Do you…remember anything?” she asked slowly, and Tag’s panic kicked up another notch as memories rose up like a quagmire to swallow him whole.

“Um. Yeah. What, I, I,” blood dripping, too-warm hanks of hair between his fingers, a terrified expression frozen forever, eyes darkened in death reflecting a monster, “I killed a druid.” He’d yelled, taken his bow and shot. The druid’s head had been in his hand, he’d carried it over to the Mare. “And yeah, she was a little mean to us, but - ”

“You really didn’t. You didn’t kill the druid,” Bryn cut across him, trading a look with Rex, and Tag’s panicked brain grabbed on to the words and presented him with more - memories.

“I know, I didn’t just kill her it was a fucking slaughterhouse.” Blood everywhere, staining the mud to rust as the head was in his grip. The druid was dead and there was so much blood - more than when Bryn had died - and he hadn’t cared. He’d been at peace; a person’s head had been in his hands, and he’d been at fucking peace. “I mean, her head was in my hands and I just - I looked into - ” cold dead eyes staring at him accusatorily. Monster. You did this you monster. Nothing human about you, nothing good left. Monster monster monster -

Tag’s gorge rose spasmodically, and his hand went to his throat as he swallowed around the sudden sourness of his mouth. “Sorry. Sorry. Yeah.” He looked down, unable to meet their eyes.

Bryn shifted but he couldn’t look up at her. “Oh-kay.”

Rex tapped her toe sharply and Tag glanced over in spite of himself. Rex’s expression was…amused? After what he’d done? “You didn’t kill the druid. That didn’t happen. You were as high as balls.”

Tag blinked.

“Wh- uh, what? I didn’t kill it? What?” He couldn’t believe it. It had felt so real - the warm blood dripping onto his boots with tiny splashes decorating his pale shins, the body-warmth of the hair between his fingers, the feeling of the knife sliding home - but even more than that, what he’d done with it. The druid had been a living, thinking being and he’d just - he’d just punted her head across the filthy ground, sticks and muck tangling in the hair as it had bounced. He hadn’t been able to care at the time, but -

“No, you just maimed her,” Sam interjected sardonically, and Tag turned his bewildered gaze on the older man. Maimed her? Was she all right?

Bryn’s voice cut through the panicked spiral of his thoughts. “Yeah. And you didn’t have a love affair with a horse either.”

Tag blinked, momentarily thrown for a loop by her words. The Mare…It was hard to think past the strangely vivid sense-memories of the druid’s severed head, but he remembered the mushrooms, too. He remembered the song - it was hard not to start sub-vocalizing the melody, at once foreign beyond words and as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. Now that he wasn’t listening to it, feeling it in his chest, it reminded him uncomfortably of the songs sung by the Others in the desert. He’d resisted singing that time, refusing to let himself synchronize with the strange choir, but this time he’d just accepted it, for whatever reason. In that song, he’d found a point of harmony with the mushrooms; when he’d eaten them, he’d found a sense of belonging.

A wave of elegiac sadness swept through him, strong enough to take his breath away. Tag remembered the worms on the Water planet, remembered feeling the sense of belonging they had attempted to confer, and this had been so far beyond that that to even compare the two would be like comparing limp lettuce to a four course meal. Where the worm had used that sense like a weapon, forcibly changing his mind for him to align with its wishes, the mushrooms had welcomed him, letting him find the balance of his experiences to theirs. It wasn’t love, Tag was pretty sure that kind of emotion was too complex for even a magical fungus. Instead it was a sense of rightness, of a puzzle piece in the correct position in a jigsaw. The perfect alignment of all that he was with all the mushrooms were, without mistake or regret or doubt.

He’d asked the Mare, he remembered that now. He’d asked the Mare and she’d said…she’d said…something, something about him finding the ground only if he gave up flying? The memories were at once crystal-clear and hopelessly muddled, and he had a nagging feeling that he wouldn’t be able to sort through them properly without time to meditate. Meditation hadn’t been his least favorite activity at the monastery - that award went to the time Toman had sent him to help the carpenters rebuild the furniture he’d allegedly broken during an escapade; he’d hammered both thumbs black and blue before the day was out - but while he’d been decent at it then it had been a while since he’d done it and he really wasn’t looking forward to trying it now.

Tag was brought out of his thoughts with a bump by Sam speaking up. “You just rode her.”

“Oh.” Tag blinked for a couple seconds as he rewound back to the conversation at hand.

“I guess you win some, you lose some, right?”

Tag slammed the telephone back down onto its receiver with a heavy clack - if the thing hadn’t been of a sturdy construction, it would likely have cracked under the blow.

He wasn’t angry, per se, but he’d gotten a little carried up and away in the speech he’d given the confused security center. It wasn’t their fault, of course, they were just doing their jobs, but their arrival would have put the whole mission in jeopardy and Tag was tired of risking life and limb for Slakta. There had been too many close calls already on this planet, and he simply couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad about thwarting another.

The slamming phone did more than end the conversation, however. One of the desk drawers had apparently not been latched properly, and had rattled open just a smidge at the impact of phone on receiver. Tag normally wouldn’t have noticed - it was such a small detail, and he’d also managed to upset a cup of pens and knock over a blank photo frame in the same motion - but a flash of shiny red from the interior of the drawer caught his eye. Ever since he’d put on the amulet, shiny things had stood out to him more and made his fingers itch to grab them.

Before he quite knew what he was doing, the drawer was all the way open and a small, red-wrapped box was in his hands. It looked different from the surroundings, more bright and vibrant in a way he wasn’t quite certain how to quantify. It wasn’t powerful in the way the things Slakta sent them into the memories to get were powerful, but it was also very clearly not part of the memory around him either. With careful fingers, he reached over and flipped over the tag attached to the top.

To Tag, it read.

From Mrs. Klaus.

Tag blinked and looked around the somewhat generic office. There was nobody else present, of course, no one else to whom the tag could refer to, but he had to check anyway. It had always been other parallels-in-training who had received gifts, not him. A few of the prettily-wrapped presents had been put on his bunk accidentally over the years, but they were never addressed to him and he’d always made sure to put them in their correct place before they were missed. He hadn’t had a family to send him gifts on birthdays or holidays, never had someone who cared enough to go that extra mile; he didn’t know who Mrs. Klaus was or how she’d managed to sneak a present into the memory of an evil necromancer, but could only be grateful for whatever was in the box.

He didn’t tear into it, as he’d seen some of the other parallels-in-training do with faced with a gift. Despite his own words not a minute before about the urgency of the situation in the bank, he couldn’t help but carefully untie the bow of ribbon and tug gently on the tucked corners of the wrapping until the box beneath was revealed. The paper tore a little bit - it was sturdy, but not that sturdy - but he managed to do a minimum of damage to it before setting it off to the side. The box beneath was a plain white cardboard, smooth to the touch and more rectangular than he was expecting. It wasn’t taped, and the top came off easily in his hands. Inside the box lay a marvelously red sweater. Tag dropped the box as he pulled the sweater out and unfolded it, and the cardboard thumped lightly back on to the wrapping paper beneath with a rustling sound.

The sweater itself was a merry red, with white snow dappling the shoulders and arms with carefully crocheted precision. Across the belly and chest area was a snowy scene picked out in whites and greens and blacks and blues, with pink touching the faces of skiers as they raced down a snowy slopes past snowmen with button eyes and crochet carrot noses. The outer fibers were smooth beneath his hands, clearly handmade, with each stitch placed with both an almost military precision and loving care, and the sheer amount of effort it represented gave Tag a warm feeling in his chest.

It didn’t match what he was wearing, but he didn’t care. He’d seen enough other people receive the gift clothing to know the first rule was that you wore whatever you got - especially when the gift-giver was around. Wasting no time, Tag pulled the sweater on over his head and negotiated it down over his shoulders and beneath his half-cape.

It was sinfully soft on the inside and warm, warmer than he was expecting, but it wasn’t the kind of warmth that made him want to sweat. For some strange reason, it reminded him more of Sam slinging an arm over his shoulders as they both drank robot cleaner while walking the decks of Haven. It reminded him of Bryn, taking one of his hands in both of her own as she spoke earnestly of what lay ahead. It reminded him of Rex punching him in the shoulder - except less painful.

It was a kind of warmth at once wholly unfamiliar and somehow the thing he’d been looking for all his life, and he couldn’t resist taking a moment to bury his face in the high collar. The sweater smelled like the corridors of Haven just after Puq finished making cookies, and Tag breathed deeply as he felt the warmth sink into the dark places inside of him and somehow make them that much less dark. Here in this moment was the furthest he’d felt from his half-dad since their introduction on the Fire planet, the most human.

The phone rang, and Tag pulled his face from the sweater with a sigh. The mission wasn’t over yet, and there was work to do.

But the sweater made it just that little bit easier to keep going.

Tait very carefully did not look at the door as the early afternoon sun streamed across the room towards it.

Her father was to be bringing the latest parallel candidate in soon, and it would not do to give them the impression that this meeting was important. Her father was a good man, but perhaps not the best judge of relationships; his last three selections of parallels for her had been…unsatisfactory, at best. All three of them had been powerful, in their own ways, and had managed to complete the psychic bond required - and yet not one of the three had managed to truly see Tait.

Pretty Tait, the news sheets called her from the day she was born. The apple of her father’s eye, and the darling of the people of Void. All three parallels had taken one look at her face and thought they knew her - what she wanted from them, and from her life. The first had tried to shield her from everything, taking her place at all social engagements; she’d released the bond and dismissed him after he fell for an obvious trick and ended up dueling a minor government functionary. The second had been patronizing, treating her like she was approximately four years old the whole of their acquaintance. He hadn’t lasted a week and she hadn’t been sorry to see him go. The third had come closest - a strong, silent type, he’d been released and dismissed on the spot when she caught him meeting with wedding planners without her.

She snapped her fan shut irritably. Simply because her mother and father were Parallel and Summoner, and also married, didn’t mean she was going to follow their example! Besides which, the man hadn’t been to her taste at all, and more fool him for thinking he was. Oh, she enjoyed the occasional tumble, of course, especially since she’d hit her majority, but he’d been far too tall and broad for her tastes. And his beard - atrocious. He hadn’t even brushed it often, let alone trimmed it at all.

Tait shook her head irritably, allowing herself to break the façade of the Brandywine Rose in the privacy of her own company. The new appellation was rapidly gaining in popularity now that she was of age, and the blush-colored blooms did complement her coloring nicely, but so many seemed to forget that the bushes hid wicked thorns behind their wide leaves and anyone who handled them without care was liable to get stabbed. It was, in fact, the main reason she encouraged the name; her beauty hid a mind just as sharp and twice as likely to pierce her enemies without warning. As all three of them as would be parallels found out the hard way, she thought with satisfaction.

It hadn’t taken much doing to maneuver them into failing, and they likely would have gotten there eventually anyway but Tait had been impatient. She loved her daddy, and wouldn’t dream of disrespecting him by publicly setting aside anything he did for her, but…she sighed. He had terrible taste in men.

The sound of footsteps in the hall alerted Tait to the fact that she would soon have company, and she straightened her posture while smoothing the irritation out of her expression. If her father had brought another shortsighted idiot in the be her parallel, the very least she could do was be gracious about it until she got rid of them. Fixing a pleasant smile on her face, she had just enough time to bring her fan up into position before the doors swung open and admitted her father and the new parallel candidate.

Tait couldn’t quite see the new person around her father, but they were certainly no ox like the previous fellow had been. Then, too, they did not simply walk around her father like he was an obstacle, as the second candidate had done, which was a point in their favor. Tait was not the Summoner yet, and decorum held it so that her father had precedence in order of protocol; while technically her parallel should be her equal in every in standing, that still did not give them leave to disrespect her father.

There was a certain gleam in the old man’s eyes as he took in the scene before him, indicating that either the candidate had passed the subtle test or that he thought he’d finally gotten the right person for her Parallel - Tait put it at about even odds. He father was a big man, and loud, but he wasn’t stupid despite what his detractors might think. He knew when to cut through the tedious dance of protocol and precedence, and when to twist it to his advantage - a trick many of the Assembly had yet to learn.

“Well Tait, I see you’re ready to meet your new parallel.” He turned and gestured grandly behind him. The new candidate was a demure young woman with strangely pale skin and hair, standing with perfect posture while wearing smoky grey-violet Parallel robes. The tie at her waist was the royal amethyst color of the Void Summoners, and her boots were the same color as her robes.

Tait’s eyes narrowed slightly as she took in the candidate. She certainly was easier on the eyes than the last two had been, but the real question still remained: Would she see Tait, or would she fall for the illusion of the Brandywine Rose?

“Tait, meet Sylvia,” her father said, gesturing expansively at the newcomer.

Sylvia bowed, as was proper when wearing robes. Exactly as was proper, not a degree more or less. “It is an honor to finally meet my Summoner,” Sylvia said, with perfect diction even if the volume of her voice was much lower than Tait’s father’s had been.

For a single instant, her eyes rose to meet Tait’s, and in that moment Tait saw two things that brought a bubble of happiness up into her chest: One, Sylvia’s eyes were the exact same shade of purple as the tie on her robe. They complimented her robes perfectly, and gave her an ethereal look that Tait could almost be envious of. Two - and more importantly - there was a spark of mischief in those eyes - something in them almost like the mirth of sharing a private joke. Look at us, they seemed to say, Both works of art, and neither one of us suited for a museum.

Perfect.

Still, simply because she approved didn’t mean Tait was going to go easy on her new Parallel. “Daddy, weren’t you going to have guests over for High Tea this afternoon?” She asked, keeping her eyes on Sylvia, whose own gaze had dropped demurely back to the floor as propriety demanded.

Tait’s father blinked. “Well yeah, but I kinda thought you were going to get to know your new Parallel! Make sure y'all’re the right fit, and all that.”

Tait smiled warmly, putting every ounce of charm into her voice. “Well of course, but we can do both at the same time. Might as well start out as we mean to go on,” she said earnestly.

Sylvia glanced up at her in surprise while her father scratched his head. “Well, I don’t know…”

“She can pour. After all, she is my Parallel.”

Her father raised an eyebrow. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” she said firmly, and he nodded.

“Be ready in half an hour, then.” He nodded first to Tait and then to Sylvia before heading out of the room.

After her earlier look of surprise, Sylvia had returned her gaze to the floor and Tait sat back to wait, letting the silence stretch for several long moments between the two of them. Sylvia, for her part, seemed perfectly content to wait without questions until the appointed hour, but if there was one vice Tait indulged it was her impatience and before long she leaned forward to address the shorter woman.

“So, you’re probably wondering why we’re goin’ to tea before we’re properly bonded,” she drawled, and Sylvia looked up with a perfectly bland expression.

“Not at all. A Parallel serves their Summoner, not the other way around. Whatever you require, I will assist you with.”

Tait leaned back, and let her smile grow lazy. “Then seems to me you might not realize what’s going to happen. You’ll be pouring, which means you’ll be taking on the duties of the hostess. You must make every cup perfectly while maintaining the required level of small talk and not spill a drop.”

A flicker of something passed over Sylvia’s face, and Tait’s smile grew wider as she stood up. “Even a single misstep will have steep social consequences.” She began to walk forward leisurely, enjoying the intense gaze of Sylvia in a way she hadn’t enjoyed herself in a while.

“The real reason you can do this, of course, is on account of the fact that you’re mine. Whatever you do, whatever mistakes you make, it’s as if I’m the one making them. Your standing is my standing, and my standing is yours.”

Sylvia watched with hungry, unafraid eyes as Tait approached her. Each step was languidly confident and she didn’t move a muscle until the taller woman was standing nearly chest to chest with the newest member of the Palace.

Tait leaned in to purr in her Parallel’s ear, and felt more than saw the other woman shiver as Tait’s breath tickled. “So remember who you really serve, when you’re pouring that tea, and let the bond take care of itself.” She slipped her token into the Parallel’s pocket and stepped back with a smirk.

This was going to be fun.

Tait grimaced as she Void-negated another bolt of the sickly green-yellow Blightning Slakta was currently favoring as her main attack.

They’d brought the Necromancer down through the ruins of her former castle; Horace and his parallel Eo had managed to work together to lure her onto an unstable section of flooring before Danny had spun up and dropped a half-ton of ice on her head. The impact had been exacerbated by the vacuum Tait herself had managed to create beneath Slakta to implode her into it, and they were currently standing in the crater that the impact had caused.

But it hadn’t been enough.

Slakta had grabbed hold of Eo and dragged him down with her as the remains of the castle collapsed. She’d torn his spirit out of the corpse, too, and now the pale shade of Eo traded blows with Horace not far away, using a knife Horace himself had gifted his Parallel. Tait, for her part, hadn’t been quick enough to block the first volley of Blightning, and she could feel it eat further away at the skin of her face as she grimaced - she’d deadened her nerve endings with Void magic, but being able to breathe through her molars was a bit disconcerting and she couldn’t see out of that eye anymore. Danny wasn’t doing much better, the hand not clutching his staff being the only thing holding his intestines inside while he sent a volley of ice spikes toward Slakta. Tait had done her best to deaden his pain too, but Void magic didn’t heal and they were both dead people walking.

A wild yell and a thunderous crack of lightning heralded Primus’ re-entry into the fight - she hadn’t seen where the other Summoner had landed when the castle fell, but the dusty state of his robes suggested that wherever it had been, he’d had to dig herself out of it first. The blue-white of his lightning was too bright to look at, with bolts of it crackling in a halo around his form as he opened himself to the Lightning and Tait shielded her eyes as she looked away. The light let her see the area around them clearly, though, which was a mixed blessing. Eo was currently the only active spirit, but Tait could see debris moving like some of Slakta’s undead servants had survived the castle’s collapse.

On the side of the Summoners, Horace appeared to be immolating the spirit of Eo while holding a familiar knife in his gut, face twisted with pain. Tait sent a wave of Void magic almost carelessly his way as she continued to take stock, and he raised his staff in thanks. Of the five of them, only Tait and Danny had declined to bring their parallels - she wasn’t even sure Danny had one - and of the three they’d started with, only Viridia of Bloom remained. She and Messorium - the Bloom Summoner - were making their way over to Tait as Primus continued his barrage.

Tait bobbed her head at the shorter Summoner and Parallel as they arrived, huffing for breath. “I don’t think us’ll ‘in,” she slurred at them, her missing cheek making speech difficult, and Messorium’s lips tightened as she followed Tait’s gaze to look at the others.

“I don’t think we can kill her,” she agreed, reluctantly.

Tait’s eyes snapped to the green-robed woman. As Summoner of the Void planet, she could read the spaces between words easily - and Messorium’s reluctance spoke volumes. “'ou kno’ another 'ay to 'in?” she demanded, actually taking a step towards Messorium.

Viridia shrank away with her eyes fixed on the ruin of Tait’s face, but Messorium held her ground. “The Web of Life,” she enunciated clearly, holding her hands out before her as Viridia grabbed her staff.

Between Messorium’s hands hung a deceptively delicate weaving of Bloom magic. Tait couldn’t follow its whole complexity because it slid her Void magic off like oil on water but it made sense that Life magic would be the counter to Death magic. Each strand of Bloom was no wider than a single hairsbreadth, and many were smaller, and yet Tait could almost swear she saw improbably small animals following its lengths, flowing in and around and through the Web.

She looked up at Messorium. “'ere did 'uo g’t ths?” she asked, fascinated.

Messorium didn’t look up from the Web. “I put it together as a way to understand Bloom better - it teaches us how living things interact, and how our magic affects the flow of the world.” She took a deep breath, and Tait was suddenly struck with a deep foreboding. “But it’s just a thought exercise. I know how to anchor it to my hands like so,” she nodded to the small Web before her, “but I can’t make a Web free-form. Especially not one large enough to trap Slakta in - it’s a Web, not a net. To weave something like that, I’d need anchors…”

She trailed off, and Tait felt what was left of her jaw set. Looking around, she could see Danny and Horace beginning to make their way over to them as well. Horace looked pale, and a large burn mark on his robes was centered over where Eo’s knife had gone in; Danny, for his part, looked to be holding on through a combination of stubbornness and spite. His hand wasn’t holding his guts in anymore only because he’d frozen a sheet of ice over the injury, and Tait could see his organs beginning to blacken in the cold. Neither of them were much longer for this world than Tait herself was, and when they died Slakta would use their corpses as playthings.

If she was still able to do so.

“Use us to tr'p her,” she said, pointing between Horace, Danny, and herself. Danny’s eyes focused sharply on Messorium as Horace finally joined their little group, and all three of them politely ignored the sounds of Viridia throwing up as she caught a good look at Danny’s stomach.

“Would it work?” he demanded, cutting off Horace as the taller man opened his mouth.

Messorium let the Web lapse as she spread her hands. “It’s the best idea I’ve got.” She looked from Danny to Tait to Horace in turn, eyes serious. “But you must understand - as the anchor points for the web, you’d be trapped here with her. Forever.”

Tait didn’t even think twice. “Don’t c’re. Pl'n’t 'nd p'ple s'fe,” she said, taking a step forward. Her son, Calm Cal, was a bit young for the job but she’d taught him what she could and the rest he’d have to learn though experience. Her Parallel, Sylvia, would take care of him and help him for as long as possible; it was the whole reason Tait had elected to leave her behind on the Void planet, after all. It hurt to think Cal would grow up without her, but as much as Tait wished to be there to watch over her son as he grew, she had the responsibility to more than 30 million people on the Void planet to keep them safe from Slakta. Above all else, her people had to come first.

“M’ daughter’s got this well in hand on Fire,” Horace agreed, shooting a dangerous look to where Slakta and Primus were still trading bolt for bolt, “and I owe that bitch for Eo. Count on me.”

Danny leaned over and spat on the floor. “Next unlucky bastard who taps the Water planet’s in for a big surprise,” he said, with an almost grim kind of satisfaction, “but I’m in. Nothing good ever came from messing with the dead, and that shit stops here.”

Messorium nodded, and took her staff back gently from the still-shaky Viridia. “This will be easiest if you can circle her, but I’ll start in three minutes regardless of whether you’re in optimal position or not.” She paused for a moment, then bowed to each of them. “May the light of the Continuum shine upon your sacrifice.”

“Don’t think the Continuum’s gonna shine where we’re about to go."

Danny’s comment was clearly meant for their ears only, but whatever Horace’s reaction Tait refused to acknowledge the sentiment as she turned to start making her way around to Slakta’s other side. The shortest Summoner wasn’t wrong, of course, but dwelling on it was a waste of precious time they didn’t have; as the most mobile, she was going to try and make for the further corner of a triangle and every second counted.

As she broke into a stumbling run over the broken pieces of castle that littered the crater, dodging around the heavily damaged but still somehow mobile undead, she reached out along the bond she’d established so long ago with Sylvia. She could feel her Parallel’s surprise and consternation as the channel opened, but now was not the time for questions.

Summoner! But-

No time, Sylvia. I’ve got less than three minutes.

Tait hesitated for a moment, before plunging onward; doubt was not a kindness. I’m not coming back.

Grief washed down the bond, enough to make her breath catch in her throat and tears sting at her eye. Are you sure?

Tait’s heart broke at the desperation that colored the words. Yes. It’s the only way to save our planet.

She could feel Sylvia pulling herself together, drawing a barrier over the negative emotions that threatened to overwhelm the bond. It has been an honor, my Summoner.

Tait ignored the formal words of leave-taking, instead shoving as much of the love she felt for her son and her Parallel through the bond as she could. Memories, too - holding Cal for the first time, her view of the bonding ceremony, the way she felt the first time she’d kissed Sylvia. It wasn’t enough, not for her son and not for the love of her life, but it was all she could give.

Make sure Cal knows, she said softly before releasing her end of the bond.

For the first time in forty years, Tait was alone in her head as she stumbled the last few feet into place for the weaving. She could feel the current of Void rising through her, inviting her to drown in its depths as she left her humanity behind, but with an effort of will she ignored it. Sylvia had kept her tethered to herself and her humanity for all these years, she would keep hold on to her identity for these last few seconds alone.

Tait heard Slakta begin to scream as the first loop of Bloom magic settled around her, and grinned with bloody teeth.

Worth it.

Horace was a slow man.

Slow to think, slow to process, slow to anger; his own mother had told him that ever since he was little, he hadn’t had an impulsive bone in his body. It was an unusual trait for someone with Fire in their blood, for Fire was the magic of high emotion. Quick to flare in anger, quick to die down again afterward, jumping from place to place and emotion to emotion faster than most could follow - that was Fire, but it wasn’t Horace.

It wasn’t until he’d gotten older and gone on his first tour of the rest of the Fire planet that he figured it out; he was the other side of Fire. The simmering lava, the inexorable tide that resulted in eruptions which permanently rearranged the landscape. Mount Horace, his father had called him jokingly. A volcano, rather than a wildfire. Even his powers had reflected it; slow to use them, they were several orders of magnitude more powerful than his mother’s when he did finally get around to it. Slow, but powerful; that was Horace.

For all his slowness, he wasn’t a stupid man. He’d picked his parallel carefully, when it had become necessary - and his wife more carefully still. While they hadn’t been madly in love they’d been good friends for the whole of their marriage - at least, as far he could remember now - and that was perhaps even more important. He’d strived to rule Fire justly and fairly, and if he didn’t always do it right not a person could say he didn’t try.

He’d had a daughter, too; bright little Mear, as Fiery as they came and the light of his life. He couldn’t remember what she’d looked like, now, or how her voice had sounded. It had been too long, longer than should by any rights have been possible, since he’d seen her, and the years had worn away her face and her voice, along with his wife’s. He couldn’t remember his parents’ names either, and doubted he’d know them if he looked them full in the face any more.

Somehow, the pain of forgetting was almost as poignant as the pain of remembering.

Not that he learned that truth right away, of course. For the first couple hundred years Slakta had delighted in reminding him of the family he’d left behind, but she’d eventually gotten bored of it and left him - and Tait, and Danny - mostly alone.

The saying went that Time was the herb that cured all wounds; in his experience, Time was more apt to simply wear away the sharp edges of the hurt. The loss of his family, the pain of being killed by Slakta, the aches of living - all of it faded away before the relentless march of Time. The only constants were the other two Summoners and their captive Necromancer.

The first time she’d dragooned them into setting up her memories for a chosen champion to go through said memories and get items of power for her, they’d resisted and tried to tell the champion the truth about Slakta. That champion had died under the claws of an angry dragon; Horace would have liked to say that that person was the last to do so, but the thieves and glory-seekers never quite stopped coming - though sometimes the periods between them were quite long. And each time, Slakta would force them to play a part in her little charade, and to stay silent about her true purpose.

They gave in, eventually. It was too much work to resist Slakta, and the champions never succeeded anyway. Besides, it was something to do and when they didn’t resist they were allowed to choose the form they presented themselves as. Over the centuries, they’d each developed a preferred guise that reflected more of what they remembered themselves as than what they’d truly looked like - though Horace had yet to figure out why Danny never got any taller.

It was only in this latest attempt by a group of adventurers that things started to change.

Now they were here, in the place where it all began, ankle deep in snow, and the current heir to the Fire planet was asking him for help. For all she currently looked like the fiend who’d kept him trapped on the wrong side of the veil for a thousand and more years, there was no mistaking one for the other. Slakta never allowed herself to be vulnerable, never opened herself up to advice. She simply took, and took, and took, without regard for anyone or anything but her own self.

He took a deep breath.

“We’ll have to fight her, that’s for sure. She’s just going to be too powerful - we won’t be able to do anything to her until we can beat her down to a place where her defenses have been lowered.” The day they’d trapped Slakta the first time was still hazy in his memory - much of what he remembered was the pain and exhaustion before they’d all been bound up in the trap.

“But we came to this planet, all five of us, as a kind of, ah,” he trailed off - they’d come to put a stop to what the Blight Summoner was dong because it had started to affect their own planets, but they’d kept their hands off until things had reached that point. A Summoner’s rule over their planet had always been absolute and unchallenged before then; he didn’t know what had happened after, but surely something had changed.

“We came to this planet to shut down the Summoner, and what she had in mind. We brought nothing other than violence; the battle that ensued was long and bloody and we paid for it.” The image of his long-dead parallel flashed before his eyes but he pushed on anyway. “And those who escaped did not escape unscathed.”

Lightning crackling in screams of rage and grief at the loss of its balance, bolts hot enough to sear flesh and blacken bone. Bloom, standing fast in the face of annihilation. Water hardening into vengeful spikes of ice at a dying man’s hand. Void, grinning with bloody teeth in a too-wide smile as death bore down upon her.

No, no-one had really “escaped” that day.

“And more, Slakta was ready for us, and she is unkillable.” They’d tried damn hard, and none of it had even come close.

“I believe, at the end of the day, violence is not going to be what ends Slakta. What keeps her here is her disdain for everyone who’s ever looked down on Blight, her disdain for the people of her planet whom she feels did not trust her or worship her adequately.” He felt his lip curl involuntarily at the last remark; worship was never something to be demanded of strangers. It was something given freely to dearest lovers, and somehow Slakta had never realized the difference.

He noticed the expression on the young Summoner’s face, and held up a hand. “I do not agree with that sentiment, but that is the way that she feels. What keeps her here is hatred. If we’re going to free her spirit, we’ll have to do it with something other than violence.” He heaved a gusty sigh. “But I do fear the prelude will be rather violent. She is the most powerful entity I have ever seen. It will not be an easy fight.”

He reached out and put a hand on the young Summoner’s shoulder. “If you are a Summoner in training, it’s smart to get advice from those that can give it to you and those you trust but at the end of the day - when you’re no longer in training - these are the kinds of things you’re just gonna hafta follow your heart on, and you’re just gonna hafta figure out on your own.” He grinned down at her, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “And if I am your great great great great GREAT grandfather, then it’ll be my honor and privilege to fight alongside you.”

He couldn’t remember what his daughter or wife looked like, or how their voices had sounded - couldn’t even remember if they’d shared his name or not - and so he couldn’t say whether this Summoner, so many centuries down the line, resembled them in any physical way before she’d got herself cursed. But the bright Fire in her soul…that reminded him of his precious Mear. As stubborn as they came, and as warm as a hearth fire on a cold night.

If they were family, then the honor was his to have known her.

She reached up and squeezed his hand back, where it rested on her shoulder. “I don’t have my normal toolbox to choose from, but…thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He released his grip and stepped back, oddly reassured. If she lived through this, he had no doubt she would become a great Fire Summoner one day.

She just had to live through this first.

Sam stared at the gingerbread crumbs that dusted his hands, mind numb.

It wasn’t your fault, Sam, the Puq said, his presence warm behind Sam’s eyes.

Sam looked up, really looked for the first time this fight. All around him, gingerbread people scrambled madly to escaped the slushy quagmire of snow his fireball had made of the town - what was left of it anyway. Larger gingerbread people threw themselves down on the mud to create a stable platform for smaller gingerbread children to save themselves from the dissolving touch of water. There wasn’t even a town left, simply squares in the dirt to show where the houses and other buildings had been; however this ended, the town was never coming back.

“No.” He said, barely above a whisper.

How could it not be?

They made their choices, Sam, the Puq whispered urgently in the back of his mind. They chose to oppose their oppressor; they knew the risks. Don’t take their sacrifices from them.

A rumbling roar that sounded like someone had dropped ice cubes down a garbage disposal signaled the entry of more combatants into the fight; Sam watched numbly as a dozen and more bears made of ice trampled over the gingerbread people as they ran to attack Slakta. Their claws and teeth of cruel ice shattered on the stone of Slakta’s skin, and their snowy bodies dashed themselves to pieces around her.

More bodies to add to the tally.

Stop that, the Puq said, sounding as cross as he ever got. That’s not what needs to happen here. Look at Slakta.

Obediently, Sam turned his eyes to the hideous monster that appeared to be slugging it out with whatever the Void had been inside Tag - and wasn’t that a conversation they were going to have later. He’d watched the young, dumb kid Slakta had pulled out of Tag’s body peel away into a monster that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the next hit horror movie in the Vid-Cinemas of Void. Kid might want to talk to someone about being a monster on the inside.

It’s okay, Sam, I know you’re just trying to cover for your own insecurities, the Puq said quietly, but not the point. Remember the staff?

Sam blinked. Slakta’s staff had been destroyed when Tag had done his little monster trick, but Sam had an eye for detail that had served him well as a private investigator. The thing had been black, with three green gems that lit up whenever she-

Her power comes from the pain others cause her. The though came in a blinding flash of insight, and he could feel the Puq doing the psychic equivalent of nodding in approval.

Exactly. She couldn’t feel the love of the gingerbread people, can’t see the beauty in the Northern Lights. She can only take the bad things, only see the negatives.

The Puq’s words conjured a slew of memories; Slakta, looking bored at the joyful reunion going on between nearby dragons, but glancing over at the skeleton unicorn abandoned by its family. Slakta, delighting in the pain of Horace losing his daughter. Slakta, gleefully stirring up discord in the group when it threatened to rear its ugly head. She only wanted the negative, only fed off it. But then-

If she can’t take the good stuff, how do we defeat her for good? He asked the Puq, who beamed in return.

We give it to her, of course. We give her the only thing you can give anybody.

Sam looked around at the devastation around him, noting distantly that the three ruined ghosts of Summoners Past were shepherding the remaining gingerbread people out of harm’s way, and then back down to the gingerbread dust still coating his hands.

How are we supposed to forgive her for what she’s done?

She’d killed so many; they’d only seen a taste of her depravity in the memories they’d encountered, and he could well imagine the depths she’d sunk to. He knew firsthand the number of things you could justify doing when looking out for number one, and he’d only been trying to survive. She’d had all she wanted and plenty besides, and had still chosen her path. How was he cupposed to give her forgiveness for that?

Sam. the Puq’s mental voice was remarkably gentle. Forgiveness isn’t about absolution; forgiveness is letting go. Hanging on to the anger and hate - that’s what the monster wants.

A gentle nudge had him glancing over at the three Summoner ghosts. If they’re going to pass on - if all four of them are going to pass on - they need to let go, Sam. And it starts with us.

Sam’s eyes returned to his gingerbread-dusted hands. He’d done - he’d done a lot. Lied. Cheated. Stolen. Used people for what they could do for him, stood by while gang bosses beat people to death because if he said something he was next. Hadn’t valued people enough for what they were - that was the grounds his first wife had used for divorce, actually. His fists clenched. Taking scummy pictures of politicians for their rivals to use, chasing down cheating husbands and wives, drinking, extortion, scamming-

Sam.

He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, letting his fists fall open as he did so. There were other memories now - memories of saving his friends, memories of dispelling Blighted magic. Being the Wizard was enlightening in more ways than one; it wasn’t just about all the fireballs, but also considering the effort he’d put forth to make this world a better place. Even if it was just the magic’d-up dreamworld of a terrible Necromancer.

This wasn’t absolution, or atonement, but -

A ground-shaking roar drew him back to the present, and he looked up just in time to see the beast that was Tag and Slakta get smashed between twin avalanches. The world held for a moment, as if the impact had been momentous enough to make Time pause for its breath, before Slakta came flying out of the snow and impacted the ground with a very final thud.

“Now this is our big moment! This is our MOMENT!”

The cry came from behind him, and Sam spun to see the gingerbread king standing on the melting remains of one of the snow-bears, clutching his staff and and waving his people forward. They came from all directions, having been tossed by Slakta or the other Summoners during the course of the fight. Some were missing limbs, others their gumdrop buttons or licorice eyes, but they came anyway with the help of their uninjured comrades. For as many as there were, the gathering was strangely silent as they surrounded the downed Slakta, and she was plenty loud enough for all of them to hear as she staggered to her feet.

“Just give me a moment to pull myself together, and I’ll kick all your asses,” she slurred, bring her clawed hands up into an approximation of a fighting stance that wasn’t fooling anybody with eyes - she had overplayed her hand, and she’d run out of tricks.

Sam looked around at his friends and allies, and was surprised to see the ghost of Tag looking at him from in front of the snowbank. He hadn’t heard the kid come out - though in fairness the kid wasn’t looking so hot. He didn’t wholly look like the weird hellbeast thing anymore, but - parts of it lingered. The horns, some of the spectral fire, a few other details that Sam absently tucked away for later discussion. Still, what mattered was that the parallel seemed to be looking to him for their next move while Sly spoke quietly to Bryn.

Sam. It has to come from all of us.

Sam took a deep breath, and then reached out and grabbed Ghost Tag’s hand; it didn’t feel like flesh, but there was some kind of resistance there and Sam could feel his skin try to crawl away from the sensation. Ignoring that, he reached out with his other hand and took a tiny, gingerbread digit in his own. All around, he could see people joining hands, and when the circle had finished he looked directly at Slakta.

“Slakta. We know you’ve been naughty this year, but there’s only one thing we can say to you. We forgive you.”

“NO!”

Slakta’s scream echoed out into the artificial night as what looked like black smoke billowed off of her.

That’s not smoke, Sam.

I’m well aware.

As the corrupted magic peeled off her in waves, Slakta began to diminish. Her skin became the pale peach of - somewhat sun-deprived - human flesh, her extra arms dissipated, her hair grew to her shoulders and no longer waved in an invisible wind, claws became nails, and she lost several feet in height.

When the billows had been reduced to a shimmer, she looked like an ordinary woman of around thirty years old. Not inhumanly beautiful, not voluptuously appealing, just - a person. In Blight-marked Summoner’s robes.

She looked over at them with blank, empty eyes. “I was so powerful. And everything that made me was taken from you - your hatred is what drives me. You can’t forgive me, I’m not worthy of it!”

Something like anguish twisted her face, and colored her last few words, and Sam let go of the hands around him with a sigh before taking a few steps forward and crouching to put himself on eye-level with the Summoner sitting in the snow.

“That,” he told her quietly, “is what is so great about forgiveness. You don’t have to earn it. You just deserve it.”

The same as you did, Sam, echoed quietly in his mind.

“No!” Slakta wailed as the shimmer of magic that had been smoking off of her suddenly grew to a tsunami.

The world around them began to unravel as more and more magic poured out of the Necromancer’s spirit. The snow began to dissolve - not melt, but truly fade from existence. The gingerbread people, the ground, the castle - all of it was beginning to dissolve into streams of mist like the sun burning away the fog of a nightmare.

A ruined hand, already in the process of unspooling into nothing, came to rest of Sam’s shoulder and he looked up into the the damaged face of Sly. Free of the necromantic magic that had given her a different form inside the memory, her face was just as beautiful on the left, and on the right the distinctive disintegration pattern of the Blightning Slakta and thrown at him earlier was very obvious. She smiled down at him, the warmth in her expression enough to completely overshadow the grim wideness of that smile.

“Thank you.”

With a small, shuddering gasp she dissolved entirely, the other two Summoners not far behind her - finally free, after more than a thousand years of torment. The gingerbread king yelled something Sam didn’t quite catch as he, too, dissolved; it was all fading faster now, the world around them disappearing into the fog.

As it did, Sam felt a tug at his chest - suddenly he was back to the way he’d always known himself, the strength back in his arms, his robes now a familiar trenchcoat and his hat back to its usual battered-fedora self. As he landed back in what could only be the real world, Sam had an instant to mourn the loss of the magic he’d wielded under the amulet’s influence. Magic had been fun, almost freeing in a way he hadn’t quite realized it could be.

He felt the Puq wink, and a tug at his hand.

He looked down.

Interesting.

Tait had felt the Web release when Slakta had regained her physical form, its threads tearing and splintering under the weight of her Necromancy, but all three of them who had been the anchors for it were still just as trapped - this time, by Slakta herself. Her necromantic memory magic kept them on this side of Life just as surely as the Web had, and the only way they’d been going to truly be freed was if Slakta was defeated - a thing they hadn’t managed to do with five fully-fledged Summoners and three Parallels.

And somehow, this ragtag group of adventurers had managed to do what they couldn’t, and Tait felt a warm smile stretch itself across her face as she laid a rapidly-disintegrating hand on the spindly Wizard’s shoulder.

“Thank you.”

If the Wizard had a reply, Tait didn’t hear it. Whatever threads of will and magic had been keeping her in the physical world collapsed like a house of cards in a high breeze. It was a breath of fresh air, a sweet release from a pain she’d had centuries to grow accustomed to as she left the physical plane behind. Ahead of her, she could see what came next, and - a familiar figure in a grey robe?

It hurt like a broken bone to stop short of her destination, but it had never been said of Tait that she lacked the willpower to do anything she put her mind to. The figure on her way to the destination anyway, and simply pausing here didn’t mean she couldn’t continue down the path afterward.

As she came within polite conversational range - if such terms could be applied here, in the place near what lay beyond - the figure spoke in a voice as familiar to Tait as her own pulse, and twice as beloved.

“A Parallel serves their Summoner, not the other way around. Whatever you require, I will assist you with.”

Tait felt like her heart would burst, if it still beat.

“Sylvia,” she breathed, and swept the slighter woman up in a hug that would’ve broken bones.

“Tait,” Sylvia replied breathlessly, and kissed her roundly.

It was a long time before the two of them broke apart; breathing wasn’t a problem when you were already dead, but you couldn’t ask or answer questions when your mouth was busy so in the end Tait was forced to end the kiss. She still didn’t let Sylvia out of the hug, though, and the smaller woman seemed perfectly content to remain where she was.

There was one important thing to say before she asked any questions, however, and Tait made sure to meet Sylvia’s eyes squarely as she spoke.

“I love you, and ah’m sorry for making you wait.”

Sylvia’s eyes crinkled in that way Tait found absurdly endearing. “I would have waited for longer. I always knew you’d make it back to me someday.”

Tait had to kiss her again for that, a quick peck on the lips that met smile with smile.

“How was Cal?”

Sylvia laughed. “He was a fine man who ended up with twin daughters - little hellions, both of them. You would have liked his wife, I think; she reminded me a little of you when her temper was up.”

The tone of Sylvia’s words was belied by the teasing look in her eyes, and Tait laughed like she hadn’t in centuries. Let Horace have his puns; she would take Sylvia’s dry wit any day, even at her own expense.

“How did you die?” She asked, more for her own curiosity than anything else. In the end, it didn’t matter how either of them died, only that they’d ended up here, together.

“Heart attack in my sleep. A quiet way to go, though earlier than I suspect Cal would have liked.” A quiet sorrow entered Sylvia’s eyes for a moment, and Tait gave her a squeeze. Neither of them had chosen when to leave their family behind, and yet they had anyway.

Tait suspected there was a little more to the story as well, but didn’t press. It didn’t matter. Not here, not now.

“How did you manage to wait?” She asked, looking at the area around them. It was alive with magic, the various elements twisting and turning about themselves in a dance that would have been stately if it hadn’t been conducted at breakneck speeds. She could feel it tugging at her core, urging her to what lay ahead. The area was liminal, and not meant to last; how had Sylvia managed it for all these years?

“I am your Parallel,” and even after all these centuries, the words still sent a possessive thrill shooting through Tait’s veins, “and what’s yours is mine. Your standing, your reputation, your will, your love. Mine, and nobody else’s, and not even death can change that.”

Tait couldn’t resist and kissed her once more, any further questions put aside. All that mattered was Sylvia, patient Sylvia, lovely Sylvia, indomitable Sylvia. Waiting in a liminal space meant to last between one heartbeat and the next for thousands of years for her Summoner.

When they broke apart again, Tait released her hug and held out an arm like she’d done so many times during her tenure as Summoner.

“Shall we?” She invited, and Sylvia laughed as she slid her hand around the proffered arm.

“We shall,” she declared, “together.”

And so they did.

——

Horace winked at the young Fire Summoner as the last of the bonds holding him to Life faded away.

She looked genuinely sad to see him go, but he couldn’t stay of his own accord any more than he could carry a tune in a bucket. It’d been Slakta’s magic keeping him, and with her final departure from this mortal coil the last of her magics were dissolving too. He could only hope that the twists and snarls she’d made in the magic of the planet itself - the mangling of magic she’d used to keep herself alive and empowered had turned Blight planet from an oddly comfortable fungal paradise into the dismal swamp-infested hellhole it’d become, or so he’d gathered from her memories - would straighten themselves out as well, now that she was gone.

But those concerns were beyond him now, as the last of his substance departed the mortal plane and moved - on.

There was a light ahead, and he moved towards it willingly. It was a warm light, and getting warmer as he approached - the good kind of warmth, the kind of warmth he hadn’t felt in centuries. Oh the Blight planet was a disgusting swamp, and make no mistake about it, but the temperature rarely got above tepid. It was the humidity that did you in Blight; you’d drown in a pool of your own sweat long before the temperature approached anything like what Horace would consider to be livable. He had been a Fire Summoner, born and raised on the Fire planet, and there’d been nothing like it on Blight. Too damp, too humid, too cool - he’d never realized exactly how cold he was, until he’d managed to get back to somewhere warm.

And getting warmer, as he approached the light. Tait would have complained and Danny would’ve doused them both in water, but neither of them were anywhere to be seen despite having been released by the same event. Wherever they were, he could only hope they had found their own light and the peace it seemed to be promising.

The closer he got, the more his heart sang with a feeling at once long-forgotten and terribly familiar. Horace had to smile as the Fire in his chest overflowed like a lava pool, spilling out over its boundaries to meet a magic it hadn’t known in centuries.

“Mear,” he said with a beatific smile on his face, and stepped forward into the light.

——

Danny grumbled to himself as he moved along. He knew exactly where he was headed, the light ahead of him as familiar as the back of his own hand, and he’d be damned if he was any later than he already was.

Moving up, he pushed open the door between him and the light, and stepped into the warmly-lit bar. The hanging lights with their little green shades swayed gently in the breeze from the door, and Danny slammed it closed behind him with a grunt. No point in letting all the warm out, that shit wasn’t cheap.

The lights twinkled off the various liquor bottles that stood haphazardly on the shelves behind the bar as he moved inside. NO MINORS one sign warned him as he moved past the old barstools and their mended-with-duct-tape cushions, WE CARD. Danny snorted as he took them in; he hadn’t been a minor in a very long time. He was more interested in the neon sign that proclaimed BEER; that’s what he really needed, after dealing with Slakta for centuries.

He went around behind the bar, noting that while the bar itself was totally empty at this time of day, someone had taken the trouble to dust before leaving last night. Surprising, considering that nobody tended to give a shit when the crud accumulated; more likely someone had spilled something and needed to clean it up. It would explain the tackier-than-usual floor, too. He’d have to talk to them about it when they got in, it was probably one hell of a story and he needed to know if anything needed replacing afterwards. Perks of being the owner, and all that.

Finding what he was looking for, he reached below the bar and pulled out a bottle of some shitty brand of beer. He frowned, but shrugged; he’d have to get one of the others to put in an order for his favorite, ASAP. Still, in times like these beer was beer and he expertly cracked open the bottle and took a swig. The bitter alcohol - real, in a way Slakta never quite managed in her death-magic fantasy world - ran down his throat with a welcome coolness, and he finished the bottle just as the door opened to admit four very familiar figures looking at him rather owl-eyed.

He waved the bottle at them. “Get the hell over here and sit your asses down.”

“Have I got a story for you.”

It’s a dark, quiet night in the city that never sleeps.

Wind blows trash down the empty streets, past storefronts and public houses with their lights off and windows tightly shuttered. The only cars trundling their way down the lonely streets are Company enforcement, their lights slowly sweeping over the clusters of huddled public scooters and small drifts of garbage with a predatory gleam.

As one such cruiser passes by, two figures melt out of the shadows opposite a silent bar. In the window of the bar is a hand-lettered sign stating that it was closed for business of all kinds until further notice. The signature on the sign is largely illegible, save for the very prominent M at the beginning of the name.

The shorter figure traces a line down the notice as the taller one lights a cigarette.

“Shit. I never thought the Spinning Shot would close. Ain’t they Tolomeo Morelli’s favorite place for business?”

A drag on the cigarette. “Sure they were. But they ain’t gettin’ any more supplies ‘n anywhere else. Can’t do business if you ain’t got no drinks.”

“Shit. How’re they - hey, you still got cigarettes?”

“Last pack. Been savin’ 'em.”

“Bum one off you?”

“What the slag. Sure. Nothin’ left worth savin’ 'em for.”

“Thanks. Used up my last pack a week into this shit.”

A smoky silence.

“So, how’s Tolomeo supposed to conduct business now?”

“Heard all the Morellis’re movin’ up. Expandin’ their territory while them Company goons’re busy tryin’ ta keep the riotin’ to a minimum.”

“Yeah. Heard they came down hard on 'em down in Shipyard Square. Hoses 'n everything. Heard a couple people died.”

“I heard it was more 'n a couple.”

“Shit. Where’d you hear that?”

“My…cousin works out that way. He said it was more like twenty, on account of ain’t nobody been eatin’ regular so when the hoses came on too strong at first they just folded up like matchsticks.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. My cousin says Company came through and cleaned up the bodies 'fore anyone could get a good count.”

A long pause.

“Y'know…I got a cousin too. She says the Company’s been contracted for body collection. Not just rioters, but in general.”

“So?”

“So…They got the contracts a couple weeks ago, right? Then yesterday there’s food for sale on the store shelves again, them new protein bars.”

“So?”

“Gluten free, low fat, high in protein? I ain’t sayin’ they is, and I ain’t sayin’ they ain’t, but-”

“But nothin’. You keep your trap shut, awright? Peoples got kids t'feed, and sure they ain’t dumb but what they don’t know for sure they ain’t gotta lie to their kids about. Plus, I heard it ain’t much different from what they give free in the factories to them workers in there.”

“Awright, fine! Ain’t gotta bite my head off or nuthin’.”

More silence.

“You heard what happened to Tommy Two-step?”

“Nah. What happened?”

“He was always braggin’ on how his shoes was made wit’ real leather, see. Couple weeks ago he gets desperate and boils 'em 'cause you can eat leather, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So turns out he’d been lied to. They took what was left away next day.”

“Sally’s gonna be sad, he was always her favorite.”

“She ain’t, I heard she got caught out after curfew couple days ago.”

“Morelli guys?”

“Worse. Company. Wasn’t much left after they was done, but they took it anyway.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

The last few flickers fall from fading cigarettes.

“Guess we better vamoose. I ain’t keen on tanglin’ with the Company enforcers.”

“You ain’t worried about the Morellis?”

“Nah. I signed on with 'em last night. New job starts tomorrow.”

“Shit. I hope you know what you’s doin’, the Morellis is serious business. Plus Ma didn’t want neither of us joinin’ them.”

“Better Morelli than the Company. And Ma ain’t given a shit about what I do since she kicked me out at 16.”

“Ain’t so.”

A pause.

“Maybe…Maybe I’ll look her up. Shit. Anyway, be seein’ you.”

“See ya. Good luck, ya crazy bastard.”

The two figures turn and depart, each to their own way. The next gust of wind blows away the little pile of ash that had gathered between the two of them, and the street is quiet once more.

Ira sighed as they walked into their suite of rooms, with Maksha closing the door as she followed.

It had been a long day followed by an even longer night. Their father had insisted they attend several meetings he’d had with Company officials during the day - to “ease them into the duties of the Void Summoner” apparently, though the meetings themselves had been so boring Ira half-suspected their father had just wanted to share the boredom out. Nothing of value had been discussed; Ira didn’t care or see why their father cared about what the Company was doing on Bloom, if it held no direct benefit for the citizens of Void. The only reason they hadn’t fallen asleep during the last meeting of the day was because Maksha had taken it upon herself to provide entertaining commentary through their bond - which then of course turned the affair into an exercise of will not to let any of their internal amusement show on their face.

Then, after all those meetings, came a dinner party to celebrate some old, mostly-forgotten victory of a previous Void Summoner. Once upon a time the whole planet would have celebrated - at the time, it had apparently been declared a planetwide holiday. That nonsense had stopped a generation or two before Ira’s father had come into power, of course - nothing interrupted the factory production now - but it was still a convenient excuse to wine and dine top Company officials that Ira’s father took advantage of.

So Ira had spent the evening being an asset to the Dietrich household. They had eaten lightly, drunk wine that by their request had been largely water, and had spoken charmingly to each guest at least once during the night. Maksha, too, had been as charming and cordial as was expected of the Summoner’s Parallel; as Ira’s right hand, she had been included in the conversation without overshadowing Ira themself, as was proper. At the end of the dinner, their father had sent them off to bed with the closest he ever came to glowing praise - a slightly less acerbic than usual critique of their performance, and the best way to improve for the next time.

Despite all of that, a restless energy sat just under Ira’s skin. Their father had sent them to bed, true, but the last thing on their mind was sleep. They could feel Maksha in their mind through the bond, interest sharpening for a moment as Ira bypassed the bedroom in favor of the powder room before Maksha herself vanished into her own room. Ira smiled as they sat down in front of the vanity in their powder room.

It was an antique, and one of the few luxuries Ira allowed themselves. The large mirror with its ringed lights made it much, much easier to apply or remove any look they felt like for the day, and the fact that they could sit down while doing so was a godsend after long parties. They looked at themselves with deep consideration for a moment before reaching for a small rag to remove their dinner party makeup with. It was what their father had expected of them, but the plan crystallizing in the back of their mind called for something much more…dramatic.

Contouring to accentuate the cheekbones - much starker highlights than their father allowed at the table. Smokey purple eyeshadow complemented by perfectly winged eyeliner traced in white. Dark, purple-red color on the lips and outlined in a darker pencil. A light dusting of moon-silver shimmer on the cheeks. They removed their business-black nail polish as Maksha slipped into the room, her curves hidden beneath the carefully-tailored outfit that Ira had commissioned from a very discreet supplier. Her makeup was more deliberate, designed to to make her jaw squarer and her features more masculine, and Ira nodded their approval as they applied a dark purple polish with glitter that looked like the stars above.

They stood, and Maksha reached over to help as they carefully tucked their black hair back and under a small mesh net they used specifically for this purpose. They reached over, and carefully lifted a perfectly-coiffed wig from one of the busts kept in the room specifically for this purpose. Purple-black curls cascaded from a side part at the top that kept the hairs away from their face as they settled the wig into place. Maksha followed them as they stepped through an adjoining door into their clothing ready room. The outfit they’d worn for the party was fine for a dinner with the Company, but it was far too lifeless for their destination now.

It was the work of a moment to pull the right dress from where it hung, neatly pressed. Ira didn’t wear dresses often, but when they did they only accepted the best. The long purple dress had a sweetheart neckline and a corset back that emphasized all the correct areas. Ira stepped into it and let Maksha pull the back tight wordlessly, her quick hands steady on the lacings that were just the right tension. White silk gloves that went up to their elbow were next, and then silver pumps with purple soles. Maksha stepped back into the powder room as Ira pulled two velvet boxes from their places on a high shelf and followed. Ira could feel anticipation crackle down the bond as they stepped into the room, and while neither of them cracked a smiled the air swirled in pleasant anticipation.

Maksha stood at the ready with a fascinator of silver and white jewels and elegant purple plumes that she held patiently as Ira came through the door holding the boxes gently. She attached the fascinator and took the velvet boxes without a word, opening the first to reveal a white and silver necklace that perfectly matched the fascinator without overwhelming it. The necklace had been an heirloom of Ira’s mother’s, but they’d commissioned the fascinator to match in secret. Or at least, tucked in with some other jewelry orders that they were reasonably sure their father had approved without reading; he’d never mentioned it, and they had to be content with that. Maksha pulled the necklace around their neck and clasped it carefully at the back. Ira had always admired Maksha’s surety with her hands; they had rarely seen her fumble anything with them, or accidentally catch something she did not mean to, and they took shameless advantage of that fact whenever it came to putting on jewelry.

Finally, Ira turned and opened the other velvet box. Inside lay a perfectly matched pair of half-masks. One shone with the silver gems of the night, and the other nearly glowed with the brilliant jewels of the day - ambers and golds that picked up the accents and tones of Maksha’s outfit and turned them into something not unlike the tiger’s eye stone. Ira closed the box again after making sure neither of the masks had been damaged before leading Maksha down the back corridors of the mansion to the stable of cars their father maintained for local travel.

Each one was a masterpiece of an era, and all were kept perfectly polished and in good working order under the hood; as technology progressed, some of the older models had been retrofitted with whatever the latest and greatest power system was, but had otherwise been left as they had been made. Some of the oldest ones lacked niceties and safety features, and were rarely driven even by the staff any more, and so Ira bypassed that section as they walked towards the front. Their father would certainly notice if one of those cars had been taken for a drive, and while they were not exactly going out without his permission, what he didn’t bring up at the breakfast table he wouldn’t ban for the future.

They stopped about midway along the stalls of cars, and Maksha stepped smoothly around them to open the door of the large, black car they had chosen. When she had first come from Cylvahl Cylesso she hadn’t known how to operate much of the devices and conveniences of the Void Summoner’s manse. She had managed to pick up the skills she needed quickly, however, thanks to a number of late-night training sessions with the current Summoner’s Parallel, and was now a better driver than Ira themself. Ira slid into the car without a murmur, and Maksha took her place in the driver’s seat as they smoothly pulled out of the garage and into the smoky night.

Their destination was a good twenty minute drive from the part of town the mansion resided in. It was not, on the whole, a place that really expected to see such exalted company as the Summoner, or the Summoner in training. It was, however, a place that made no assumptions, asked no questions, and allowed anyone on the stage. How long they stayed there depended on how good they were.

Ira was very good.

Maksha pulled smoothly into a parking spot not far from their destination, and Ira handed her mask forward before she got out to open their door. The mask and the tailored clothing combined to give her a very square figure - one exactly suitable for Buongiorno, the bodyguard of Notte. Ira could feel the attention of the passersby as they stepped from the car in their elegant costumes, and preened internally. These visits had layered uses - they helped them blow off steam, they gave them a direct line into the real troubles of the City, they let them make useful future contacts - but the second most pleasurable one was always the envious looks and the sure knowledge that they were the absolute center of attention. It was a heady, vivacious feeling, and Ira relished in it as they and Maksha walked towards their destination.

The Masked Cat was a combination drinking establishment and gambling parlor - though there were rooms available if you were inclined to take them by the hour. The bar itself had a small, raised stage with a microphone and a usually-crowded dancing area. It was separated from the gambling tables by a long, custom-made folding screen and both halves of the establishment followed the same set of rules: no real names, no true faces.

A sea of glittering masks greeted Ira as they walked through the door. They ranged from cheap plaster and glitter to finest porcelain and real gems. A delicate waif was crooning into the microphone as they entered, but she stopped and vanished as Ira made their way purposefully towards it. The management knew Notte, and the stage was always clear for the Lady of the Night when she arrived, a fact which never failed to amuse Ira.

They took the stage as the crowd noise dimmed in anticipation, and the small live band erupted in the familiar call of the trumpets as they started up Ira’s preferred - and amusingly ironic - opening song.

This was the moment Ira lived for, even more so than the attention of the crowd. There was something that satisfied a deep and visceral yearning in their soul when they took the stage; in another life, they might very well have been a lounge singer. An opera star. The leader of a band. And, in these moments, the fact that they were none of those things - and never could be - fell away.

Ira reached out and pulled the microphone towards them.

“I’ve got the world on a string, sittin’ on a rainbow…”

Everything was quiet.

That was what struck Tag first, as he lay on the ground and stared up at the blank, purple-tinted sky nearly empty of stars. No metal rattled or creaked, no hedges rustled, no flames crackled. No voices cried out in terror, no footsteps crunched over rubble - he couldn’t even hear himself breathing, though he could feel the smoke and dirt heavy in his lungs. The world was quiet, as if it had been just as surprised at the size of the explosion as Tag himself had been.

Alongside the silence, the mask rested coldly on his face. He had expected the metal to warm against his skin, but it had not. It made breathing difficult, and left a metallic taste in his mouth, but his arms felt as heavy as tree trunks. He couldn’t have lifted them to remove it even if he had wanted to. Besides, despite the purple tint to everything the gem eyes gave him a wider range of view than their outward appearance would suggest.

It was still surprising to see motion out of the corner of his eyes, though. He could feel his heart beat a little faster in his chest, but he still heard nothing. Tag watched, almost hypnotized, as Cenack walked over and stood beside him, an almost considering expression on the robotic face. As Cenack reached down towards his head, Tag could feel a little jolt of adrenaline job his system - in a strange, disconnected way.

Whatever the explosion had done to Tag’s body - and the profound silence that was only now beginning to lessen probably meant it’d done a lot - it felt like his mind had come a little loose from his physical form. He could feel his bond to Bryn like a tether, keeping him from flying away, but he wasn’t wholly present in his body either. It was almost without conscious thought that his mind reached out to touch Cenack’s as he raised his own arm to - keep Cenack from taking the mask? Push that heavy metallic body away before it stove his head in? He couldn’t say.

“Cenack.”

The metal hand reaching towards him did not pause, but Cenack’s grip was gentle as he pulled the mask away from Tag’s face. Tag coughed a little as smoky dirt caught in his throat and the dry, painful heat of the night air rushed freely across his face. His voice was hoarse as he continued, the strange impressions he was getting from the person above him fueling his next words.

“Hey man, look around you. There’s - people. In that apartment. I know that there are things you’re fighting for, and things you’re fighting against, but this - this not who you are, who we are. I know that you care. I know that this is not part of your soul - H-hello? Is anyone there?”

Tag broke off into more coughing, bringing his arm down to brace against his own ribs, and he felt more than saw the effect his words had on Cenack. His connection to the robot’s mind wasn’t as strong as the one he held with Bryn, but it was more than enough to let him see what was happening. There had been - not nothing, worse than nothing when he’d first reached out. Cenack’s mind had been filled with an almost clinical detachment, an awareness of the group’s insignificance to Cenack’s aims - and above all else the almost overwhelming hunger for power, more power. It was simple, ugly, and hideously familiar; it was the same kind of gnawing, craving hunger that he knew from half-dad and the Malice - but there had been not even a whiff of that taint in Cenack’s mind. Instead, it was - mundane. Native. Of this place, and at once horrifyingly human and completely inhumane.

And yet, as Tag had continued to speak he had felt - something. Something that grew stronger as Tag spoke his words directly into Cenack’s frontal processors. A kinder, angrier, more nuanced Cenack that bloomed like a complex flower as Tag’s words fed it power. Tag had never connected to Cenack before - not in this fashion anyway - but this seemed like more of the bitingly sarcastic and oddly happy-go-lucky robot that had accompanied the Professor during his escape so very many months ago now.

And the complex Cenack was pissed.

It was hard to see through the smoke and uncertain light, but to Tag’s eyes it looked almost like Cenack stumbled a bit as his other side took control. The hungry, detached side was still present, but now it was Cenack proper who looked Tag straight in the eyes as he spoke - though it sounded like every word was a struggle for the metal man.

“We had to take this. So they didn’t get it.”

Tag couldn’t quite see what Cenack was talking about, but he wasn’t sure it would matter right now anyway.

“Okay.”

“And. Nobody was - strong enough to use it. No human. They knew it would - destroy them.”

An image floated into Tag’s mind of a soft, human hand reaching out to grip the raw, red power Cenack had pulled from the portals - and shredding into a thousand wisps of ash. He didn’t know if Cenack was remembering something that happened, or if it was just a vision of what might have been, but it probably did not matter much either way.

“So they ‘elected’ me to carry it. And now I can’t turn it off.”

The impressions attached to 'they’ in Cenack’s mind were fleeting, sporadic - Tag couldn’t see any one thing long enough to recognize it, and the associations were frustratingly vague. Cenack had clearly not been with 'them’ for long.

“Who’s they?”

A clear image of a smiling child holding a donut with two ducks kissing flashed into his mind a split second before Cenack spoke, and Tag felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“The Rebellion.”

Tag gulped through a mouth as dry as sand that tasted of ash, and pushed forward anyway. Whatever the Rebellion thought they were doing, surely they hadn’t sent Cenack out on a murder spree on purpose.

“The - the mask? Or the tape in your chest?”

Cenack looked at the mask, and Tag felt his careless dismissal of the thing as a pretty bauble before the words ever left his mouth.

“This? This is just a trinket. It’s armor.”

Tag coughed again as Cenack placed the mask back on over his faceplates; he could feel as the hungry, careless side of Cenack grew stronger with that armor slipped back into place.

“Just - just give it back, Cenack,” he rasped, and felt a thrill of fear when Cenack neither acknowledged his words verbally or made a move to do so. The empty, dangerous side wasn’t tied with the mask, perhaps, but pyschically the concealment of Cenack’s real faceplates made it that much harder for the robot to resist giving in to those growing impulses. Removing it would fix nothing, but it would stop things from getting worse.

Cenack’s next action drove any schemes Tag might have tried to get the mask back completely out of his head.

“This,” the robot said and pulled back the now-torn remains of his coat.

It was - a violation, in the worst way. Whoever, whatever had added this strange box to Cenack clearly had never worked on a robot before. They had simply cut his chestplates apart with shears to reach the circuitry they needed, and never mind about whatever ports already existed. Wires ran through ragged holes, and pools of solder made shiny welts and streaks of silver that looked uncomfortably like half-healed burns. Parts of both Cenack and the device were streaked in soot, and hot weld lines made jagged scars that stood out with eerie clarity.

Tag was not himself familiar with how Company robots were put together, but even from here he could see that the patch job lacked any of the finesse he’d seen in the Professor’s mechanics, and besides the Professor would know how to put the device in properly not - whatever the Void had happened to Cenack. Whoever had done this to his friend, Tag doubted the Professor was even aware it had happened - or that he would have okayed it being done to Cenack if he had known.

“I, I can’t turn it off. And I only got a second here to talk to you, 'cause I can feel the surge coming on, but.”

Tag could feel it too, the rising craving for power and the overwhelming numbness to any other feeling that was lurking at the bottom of Cenack’s mind. Time was definitely running out. Cenack pulled out the text Bryn had given him - Tag could see the words “User Manual” on the cover, though he was pretty sure they hadn’t found anything like that in the apartment - and waved it at him.

“With this I’ll be able to fix it.” Tag could feel the desperate hope in those two words - and the split second of crushing despair and betrayal as Cenack opened the book to see whatever Bryn had actually given him.

Then the feelings disappeared as the overwhelming hunger surged and the book turned to ash in Cenack’s hands. Tag reached out desperately as Cenack looked at him one last time, completely deadpan.

“The OSI device. It’s what everyone wants.”

Cenack took a step back through a portal that had opened silently directly behind him, and disappeared as it closed.

Tag let out a surprised breath as all the air was driven from his lungs again. Wherever Cenack had gone, it was beyond his psychic reach and the abrupt cessation of the link left Tag stretched out and completely open to the psychic phenomenon in the area. An area that had just weathered an explosion that completely destroyed one apartment building and condemned two others.

For a single, agonizing instant, he could feel it all. Terror washed through him, the stunned numbness of shock, the painful agony of denial, the raw anger that only barely coated panicky fear - all that poured into him and more before he could pull back behind his own psychic shields and Tag could feel tears stream down his face as he tried desperately to get his breath back.

He had to help. For the real Cenack, for the good people he knew, and for what he himself might have done if he’d given in to half-dad. He had to help.

Slowly, painfully, Tag rolled to his feet and walked into the rubble that used to be a building.

APARTMENT EXPLOSION KILLS ONE

Explosion Cause Unknown; One Dead, Dozens More Injured.
_________________________________

Authorities Spend Hours Pulling Victims From Rubble.
_________________________________

Company authorities were called out to the Quiet Arms last night on reports of someone disturbing the peace. What they found when they arrived was utter chaos.

Authorities arrived on the scene to find the Quiet Arms completely demolished - right on down to the foundations. Survivors were already beginning to stumble from the wreckage, and the Enforcer in charge of the scene wasted no time in directing rescue and evacuation efforts. Whatever destroyed the Quiet Arms also did significant damage to the two adjacent apartment buildings, rendering them dangerously unstable.

As the hours passed casualties mounted; more than twenty-seven people were taken to the local charity medical center, with five flown directly to the Company Critical Care unit in Midtown. As of the time of this article, only one death has been reported - one Phyllis Morelli, a long-standing pillar of the community and widow of the late Frank Morelli, alleged Don of the Morelli crime family who disappeared under mysterious circumstances more than twenty years ago.

Once all residents had been accounted for and first-response engineers declared the rubble stable, Company investigators began to canvas the scene. According to an anonymous source within the department, prior to the explosion there was some form of fire started in the garden behind the Quiet Arms. While the fire has been ruled out as a possible cause of the explosion, authorities are now considering whether the explosion was an accident…or an intentional act of sabotage.

When this reporter reached out to the Company Enforcer in charge of the investigation, one Carmine Draig, she said “If you don’t get that recorder out of my face, I will stuff it so far down your throat you’ll be [crapping] audio tape for a month.” No further comments were given, and the status of the investigation remains ongoing.

Buildings Take Brunt Of Damage

Both buildings to either side of the Quiet Arms have been condemned as unfit for habitation. More than three hundred people are currently displaced because of this tragedy; some have been put up in other Company bunkhouses, while most were left to fend for themselves. “I have no place to go, and they wouldn’t let me get any of my stuff. What am I supposed to now?” asks Leonard Corman, age 27, who was displaced from one of the damaged apartments.

Similar sentiments were collected from a number of other former residents. Company housing representatives released a blanket statement that all dispossessed persons could find lodging at Company wayhouses for reasonable rates until they found other long-term solutions.

Coming on the heels of three months of critical food shortages, this statement seems rather disingenuous and prompted only disgust amongst former residents. A number of them declined the Company’s offer and are currently unreachable for further comment.

An explosion with causes still unknown killed one and injured or maimed dozens of others. Company officials remain callous in the wake of such tragedy. Citizens outraged by Company treatment go off the grid. More information to come as case develops.

“Take that!”

Rex roared her challenge as she swept half a dozen Whitecoats into the air with one sweep of her repurposed pillar. This wasn’t her first time wading into battle in a construction mech, but it had been a while. Long enough that she’d forgotten the thrill of all that power at her command, certainly, and that feeling thrilled in her veins as she swung again. There was something clean about the rush of pitched battle; unlike the hazy murkiness of the political bullshit she’d been having to deal with since she landed, here she knew her enemy. They came at her head-on, and didn’t try and doubletalk her into thinking they were on her side - or that she was on theirs. This fight was the simple certainty of the blood in her ears, and the heft of the pillar in her mechanical hand.

Pitched battle had a certain rhythm to it, a flow that Rex was familiar with, and when the currents redirected unexpectedly she was already turning to face the new variable. Someone else was throwing Whitecoats, and the distance they were going meant that, whoever they were, they could be a serious threat even with her mechsuit. The Whitecoats - nerds one and all, armed with technology they thought would make up for their physical deficiencies - were scrambling to turn and face the threat. Fewer of them were trying to make it past Rex to the portal to the Phase State, but Rex wasn’t about to let any of them through and she tossed another three away into the rubble even as the new player crested the hill.

Rex felt almost giddy with relief and elation as a hulking purple figure became visible over the lip of the cratered ruins of the Summoner mansion. Puq’s huge fists swept scientists into the air left right and center, each ringing thud marked by one of his trademark phrases.

“Ooo, watch it! Happy landings! Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be fine! Whoops, little hard-”

Rex surged forward, clearing the thinning sea of Whitecoats between her and Puq with an ease that bordered on contemptuous; Maksha could hold the portal for a few moments.

“Puq!”

Her yell seemed to take Puq by surprise, but he didn’t resist when she swept him up into the arms of her construction mech. When Tag hadn’t been able to find a trace of Sam with his weird magic head stuff, Rex had gotten worried. When Jenny had failed to return…

Rex was used to losing people. Used to being the only one left standing out of a whole squadron. When things got bad, you sent Rex in because Rex was a survivor; she’d built her career on living through things that had killed other people - sometimes lots of other people. She’d learned long ago not to get attached to her teammates. She’d learned how to work with people, and how to set aside personal feelings and get the job done when those people were killed in the line of duty. She attended the mandatory funerals, and held her wakes in private when she needed to.

It wasn’t until she’d been assigned to Bryn and Tag and the Professor that she realized how lonely she’d been. How good it felt to let people get close, people she could - mostly - trust to handle whatever the mission threw at them and not die in the process. The Professor had gone his own way, and she had to respect him for that - especially as she’d gotten deeper into the Company. Sam, though - she’d thought Sam was cut from the same cloth as her. Tough. Independent. Willing to do whatever it took to get the mission done, and keep a professional distance on things.

They’d all wormed their ways into her heart, painful idealism and bitter cynicism giving way to something more comfortable, and to see Puq alive was pretty great.

A shout caught her attention, and she tore her eyes away from the purple-crystal grin on Puq’s face to look and see that the ridge he’d come over wasn’t empty. “Treats or trauma!” Yelled the first goon in a cheap suit as he lumbered over the hill. In his left hand he had a…cannoli? In his right hand, he had a gun. More and more of them poured over the hill, and she could see Puq’s fingerprints all over seasoned mobsters bringing food to a gunfight.

Still, if the Morellis were here, they could keep the Whitecoats busy enough to let Maksha hold the portal, a fact which suited Rex right on down to the ground. While it was kinda fun to throw people through the air, letting Bryn and Tag face C-NACK without her or Sam to help didn’t sound like a very good idea - especially since Bryn had already almost died once on her watch.

She turned, Puq seeming content to remain in her arms, and began lumbering at speed towards the portal. Maksha, using several Whitecoats and a goon as jumping-off points, landed in front of it well before Rex had covered half the distance. She put her had to her head as Rex picked up speed, and Rex could see her lips move. Whatever she said was lost to Rex over the roar of the battle, but the portal irised open just as Rex reached it so Rex could only assume she’d reached out to Ira on the other side.

Rex angled a little bit and used a piece of broken rubble as a ramp. One step, two, and on the third she pushed off as hard as she could, feeling the rubble give beneath the power inherent in the construction mech she was wearing. Still, it was enough to propel her into the dive she wanted, sliding neatly through a portal correctly sized for an average person but just a bit small to fit the mech through otherwise. As she passed through the portal she twisted, spinning Puq away so he could land on his feet while she pulled the mech into a diving roll that ended with her upright once again and facing a disgruntled-looking C-NACK pulling himself out of a pretty impressive crater in the ground.

The place they were in was…strange. It was definitely the leveled Summoner Mansion it had been outside of the portal, but it was even more so. Remnants of the structure lingered in the air, like the place hadn’t quite realized the palace was torn down. The colors were right, but also wrong; the ground was ground-colored, but that color was made up of streamers of a bunch of other colors that moved even as she looked at it. Reds and oranges mixed with greens and yellows to make the ground, blues and cyans made up the sky - but there was also blue in the ground and red in the sky and all of it was moving, all the time. Rex had a sneaking suspicion that if she could feel magic, this place would make a lot more sense - but she didn’t, so it didn’t.

“Oh. Oh no.”

It was quiet, on this side of the portal. The sounds of battle were still present but muted. Muffled. Tag’s soft words were plenty loud enough to be heard over the white noise of people dying.

Rex turned.

Puq was still smiling, but there was an edge to it that Rex didn’t like. Behind him was-

“Sam,” Rex breathed.

Sam hung in the air. Unlike the rest of this weird place, his colors didn’t move. Instead, his hair spread out from his head in a strange halo, almost like he was underwater. His coat, too, shifted around him strangely like he’d gone swimming in it. His hat was gone. A golden thread ran from his chest into Puq’s, holding him a few feet behind the crystal behemoth.

He wasn’t breathing.

Sam wasn’t breathing.

“Oh no.”

MORELLI CRIMES EXPOSED!

Crime Family On Hook For 80 Years Back Taxes

An organization in booze, vice, drugs, and many such other acts deemed both illegal and immoral by the laws of Void, which Company enforcement claims has been transacting a business worth more than ten million credits a year - a supertrust operating with all the efficiency of the Company itself - came under siege yesterday as Company enforcers raided thousands of establishments simultaneously.

Acting on reports from an anonymous source which released all of the Morelli financial records out into the Void Wide Web, Company officials wasted no time in organizing the mass arrest and incarceration of every member they could find of the Morelli organization. The first raids began less than an hour after the release, and netted most of the higher leadership. Umberto “Mumbles” Morelli, current head of the Morelli Family, and several other high-ranking Morelli Family members were spotted being loaded into Company vehicles.

Once the Company had the leadership in custody, they moved on to the next steps. Three more hours of quiet heralded the biggest simultaneous Company action in history. Millions of Company Enforcers were deployed to hundreds of thousands of Morelli-run establishments. Tens of thousands of bars and bordellos, pawnshops and pillboxes, sweatshops and swanky clubs stand closed this evening as entire staffs were rounded up into Company vehicles.

Charges To Be Determined

While the Company has more than enough evidence of tax evasion to put away the upper management for a very long time, that may not be the end of the Morellis’ troubles. Already some of the lower-tier goons have started singing about the things they’ve been ordered to do in exchange for reduced sentences. One Morelli associate, who declined to be named in this article, told reporters “If they’s inside, then I don’ wanna be inside wit’ ‘em. An’ if I’m not in wit’ 'em, they’s not gonna catch me.” Similar sentiments were expressed by a number of other men nearby.

Company enforcement declined to comment, going so far as to destroy several recording devices presented by members of the press. Still, while tax evasion is not a capital charge, the testimony so far provided warrants more serious charges. Several experts on the subject have gone so far as to opine that charges might be leveled under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. While those laws have been on the books for almost a century, actually bringing enough evidence to prove their violation is a mug’s game. Still, with testimony provided, such charges may indeed be brought.

Some Leadership Still At Large

While the first raids netted a majority of Morelli leadership, three of the biggest names remain at large. Don Tolomeo Morelli, head of the alcohol and drug portion of the Morelli empire, slipped his cuffs and disappeared into the sewers. Company enforcers are confident in their ability to recapture the Don, but to date he remains at large.

Don Salvo Morelli, head of the fences and thieves, was last seen climbing out onto the balcony of his fifteenth-story apartment. When Company enforcers went out on the balcony in hot pursuit, the Don had completely disappeared. Subsequent searches of the apartments above, below, and around, also failed to turn up any traces of the wily Don. Anyone with information regarding his whereabouts is encouraged to submit a statement to Company headquarters.

The third and final member of the Morelli leadership to remain at large is none other than Mumbles’ daughter and heir, Sofia Morelli. She was not with her father when he was taken into custody, nor was she at any of the other Morelli establishments in the district. Her capture is a priority for the Company, and they have issued a several-million credit reward for information leading to her arrest. She is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.

Power Vacuum

With the Morelli crime syndicate in ruins, other gangs have already started to migrate into the gaps left behind. Tamila Ibragimova and her band of miscreants have already clashed with the Aros clan for control of the northernmost portions of the City. Harvey Vaughan is rumored to have staked his claim on the factory districts, and the Bärlocher Bunch moved south to take the Pleasure District by storm.

Chaos abounds, and the Company is already trying to beat back the flames. Precincts have been assigned extra staff to try and deal with the fighting in the streets, and anyone causing trouble can expect to find themselves sharing a cell with a Morelli - a dicey proposition at the best of times. A curfew has been enacted, and citizens are encouraged to stay off the streets until the fighting dies down.

The Scales of Justice

While everyone in custody is technically entitled to a formal hearing, many of the Morellis are trying to cut deals to avoid that. Mass indictments for the low-level associates are expected to come down in the next week. Mid-tier associates will also receive a mass indictment with more serious charges once it is determined what those charges will be. Morelli upper-level management and leadership will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

If any of the Morelli Family choose to go through with a hearing, they may spend up to five years incarcerated before they get it. With a heavy caseload at the best of times, the judicial system is currently threatening to buckle under the current deluge. A number of judges and lawyers were also picked up on evidence in the Morelli ledgers, and their absence only creates more backlog. If things get too heavy, however, other judiciary systems on the other planets have already volunteered to send what judges they can spare to speed up the hearings process.

As the sun sets on a new and exciting chapter in Void planet history, one thing is crystal clear; when it comes to taxes, crime really should pay.

It’s a dark night in the city that never sleeps.

There are noises in the distance, the sounds of revelry and business and factories that ran twenty-four hours a day, but in this section there’s a tense sort of silence. The kind of silence that happens because people are afraid of what’ll happen if they make noise, if they draw attention to themselves. Not even Company enforcement cars prowl these streets, most of them too busy hunting their prey elsewhere.

Just one cruiser pulls slowly down the lane, only the dimmest of lights on as it creeps further and further into a neighborhood where its compatriots had howled at high speeds not hours before. Eventually it stops, about halfway down the block, and the lights on the front of it go out. A dark figure climbs out of the front seat and walks around to the back. It opens the door and roughly hauls a taller figure out; a flash of silver cuffs catches the streetlights as the taller figure stumbles under the force of the yank.

The shorter figure doesn’t wait for the taller figure to catch its balance, however, merely hauling the taller figure so roughly that it has no choice but to follow. The two make their uneven way a few steps further up the block and dip into an alleyway. The shorter figure slams the taller one up against the wall not far down from the mouth of the alleyway.

“The void did I tell you? The void were you thinkin’? Joinin’ up wit’ the Morellis, and now look atcha!”

“Least I didn’t join the Voiddamn Company, the void wit’ me! The void wit’ you! What’d Ma say?”

“The void do you care! We was starvin’ and there weren’t no more jobs to get! You knew the Morellis was bad news, and you went wit ‘em anyways!”

“A job’s a job, and it’s not like they got you doin’ any different 'n me. Sendin’ you all goons to pick us all up like you was better or somethin’. Whatcha gonna do now, break both my legs? What’s Ma gonna say when she hears about what they got you doin’?”

A long silence stretches, broken only by the sound of heavy breathing.

“Ma…”

“No.”

Another long pause.

“What. Happened.”

“I told you. There weren’t no more jobs be had. So I joined up, but they wasn’t paying much 'cause everyone was joinin’ up.”

“So, what, you ain’t scrounge enough?”

“Me? ME?! The void were you doin’?! You never come home! For all we knew you was DEAD!”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t! An so help me, if you left Ma out to dry 'cause you was the one working…”

The meaty thud of a fist hitting a face echoes down the alley.

“Don’t you DARE say that ta me again! I went to work like to collapsin’ I was so hungry, just to make sure Ma had enough!”

“So what, you expect me ta believe Ma died what, a natural causes?”

A gusty sigh winds its way down the alley.

“You…You know Ma. Knew Ma. She ain’t never let a kid go hungry in her life. Morrises, three doors down, just had their new kid right before all this shit started.”

“Void. What’s that make, four?”

“Five. Two cute little boys and three pretty little girls - and they still got 'em, every one. Ma…”

“She didn’t.”

“Fuck you, you know she did.”

“That ain’t fair. Ain’t right.”

“Like you know anythin’ about fair. Or right.”

A big sniff echoes loudly down the alley.

“It was the day the shield went down, can you believe it? I’d just heard the news over the wireless. Peoples was dancin’ in the streets. I asked to go home a little early, make sure Ma knew the news. When I got home, she was sittin’ in that rockin’ chair Dad got for her for their weddin’ - you know, the one made a’ real wood from Bloom. By the time I got there she was already stiff but - smilin’. She musta known.”

“Void. I’m-”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. I told you, you knew, you coulda come home at ANY TIME. Don’t you dare say you’re sorry now. Not after joinin’ the Morellis. Not after missin’ the funeral. Don’t you dare.”

Silence reigns for a long moment.

“So, what, you gonna kill me? Gonna off your older brother too on orders from on high?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. ’M tired a killin’. ’M tired a bein’ someone Ma’d be ashamed of. Soonest I do this, I’m turnin’ in my notice.”

“…What’re you gonna do?”

The shorter figure draws a Void blaster and calmly shoots the wall beside the taller figure’s head. The shot echoes loudly up and down the alley, and the silence seems to become even deeper afterward as if anyone who had even been thinking about motion dismisses the thought.

“You’s dead. I did what they said. Arrest all known associates of the Morellis, or kill 'em if they won’t come peaceable. So you’s dead.”

“What-”

A soft rustling noise stops the question in its tracks.

“These is new papers. New name, new life. You couldn’t be bothered to keep up wit’ your old one, and Ma’d be even more disappointed in us if we killed each other. So you take these, and you go down to the docks, and you get on the first ship outta here and you don’t never come back, you hear? If I hear you’s back in the City - any part a’ the City - I’ll find you and kill you myself. You wanted not to be part a this family so bad, well. You ain’t any more.”

The click of handcuffs releasing is loud in the still night.

Silence reigns for a long few seconds.

“Maybe you’re right, maybe I ain’t got the right to be sorry about leavin’, about not comin’ back, about thinkin’ I had more time. But. I’m sorry for your loss. And…thanks.”

“Go to the Void. And don’t come back.”

The taller figure darts out of the alley and down the street, rapid footsteps fading into the labyrinthine streets. Another loud sniff comes from the alley.

“Wherever you are, Ma, I hope you’re finally proud of me.”

The shorter figure walks out of the alley and slowly gets into the Company cruiser. Lights off, it pulls away from the curb and into the night.

Tag was dreaming.

Again.

He looked around at the black space that enveloped the small pillar of light he stood in and hung his head. It had taken him a long time to fall asleep after - well. After. Puq’s smiling face felt like it was indelibly etched on the inside of his eyelids and every time Tag closed his eyes he could see the elemental asking him to carry his best wishes back to Sam, and to look after the man. It hurt, gnawing on his heart with a dull agony, and he’d spent a long time jerking awake to find himself reaching for someone who wasn’t there anymore - not in the real world, not in the phase state.

Tag hadn’t been alone in his grief; Sam had kicked them all out of the inner office when Rex wouldn’t stop breaking his filing cabinets, and even after that she’d been prowling the walls of the outer office restlessly with a glint in her eyes and new tracks on her cheeks every time she turned around. Bryn had been quieter, more withdrawn - she’d chosen to simply sit at Jenny’s desk while the older woman followed Rex around to keep more filing cabinets from being smashed - but Tag could feel the storm of her emotions through the bond. The pain of loss, the grief at Puq’s choice - and the overwhelming guilt at her part in it. A guilt that Tag shared; he’d been there, he’d watched the power flow from Puq into Sam as he guided it to make sure nothing went astray. Puq’s life had been in his hands and now Puq was-

Tag shut the thought down with a heavy sigh, looking at the blank dreamscape that certainly wasn’t his own wearily. “What do you want,” he asked, not bothering to disguise the exhaustion in his voice. “What is so important you couldn’t let me sleep.”

He was beyond the point of surprise, but the fact that his voice didn’t echo even the slightest bit made him sigh again. Apparently whatever the Void had dragged him here wasn’t feeling chatty this time.

A light came up slowly in front of him, illuminating two dogs as they walked side-by-side through a barren, rocky wasteland. Though he didn’t feel any temperature changes to the dreamscape around him, the light beat down on the scene relentlessly above and heat shimmers distorted parts of the land. The rocks were all a uniform shade of grey, and it was only by the shadows they cast that he could see any texture at all.

The two dogs were as different as night and day. The smaller one had a dusty tan hide, worn to baldness in patches that complemented its ragged ears. The scars of a lifetime decorated its flank, but its warm brown eyes were sweeping the area vigilantly.

By contrast, the older one was clearly only half-grown. Its hide was nearly black and unmarked, smooth and glossy with the bloom of youth and health. Then, too, its paws and ears were still yet too big for it - not by much, but it still needed to finish growing into its limbs. It gamboled around the older dog who snapped and growled at it whenever it got too annoying. Still, the snaps never caught anything but air and the growls never progressed to more violence.

Still, it was clear that the environment was hard on the older dog. As the light grew brighter, its snaps grew less frequent, its growls unfocused. It seemed more content to let the younger dog do as it wished, whether that was leading the little pack of two along their path, or rushing off to the side to investigate something that had caught its interest. It wasn’t long after that that the older dog stumbled, panting. The younger dog rushed to its side, whining, and supported the older dog for a few more steps.

It wasn’t enough, and the older dog collapsed.

The younger, larger dog began whining frantically, shoving at the older dog with its snout and licking its face.

The older dog did not move.

The younger dog grabbed the older dog by the scruff of the neck and began dragging it forward along the path.

Still the older dog did not move.

The younger dog dropped the older dog and looked around for a few moments before howling miserably to the merciless light above. Nothing answered, and the younger dog ended its howl with a huff. It looked aruond once more before leaning down and biting into its own foreleg.

Blood dripped freely from the wound, in a way that didn’t quite look right to Tag’s eyes. It made a small red river from the younger dog’s leg to the older dog’s muzzle.

The older dog stirred.

A long pink tongue flicked out to lap up the moisture.

As Tag watched, the younger dog grew weaker as the older dog grew stronger, each pump of blood giving rise to another lap of a red-stained tongue. The younger dog lay down, panting heavily, as the flow of blood began to slow. When the flow stopped, so did the younger dog’s heavy pants and for a moment the only sound was the older dog’s strained breathing.

Finally, the older dog rolled to its feet and shook itself briskly before barking once.

It cocked its head, but no answer came.

It barked again, louder this time.

The younger dog did not respond.

The older dog began racing to and fro, barking desperately as it sniffed here and there. Tag was confused for a moment; could it not see the corpse of the younger dog right there? Could it not see its friend lying unmoving in the sand?

Whether the dog could or couldn’t see the younger dog’s body, it eventually stopped barking. It stood silent for a long moment, ears perked and crooked tail at attention, before sighing heavily. Ears and tail drooping, it made its way silently out of the beam of light that illuminated the scene and left the corpse of its fellow lying on the hard, hot stones.

Even as Tag watched, however, time began passing in the illuminate scene before him. The light flickered between day and night, and the hard, unforgiving stone weathered gently to something softer. But what really arrested Tag’s attention was the corpse of the younger dog.

At first, it seemed like nothing was happening to it, but as he watched it seemed to sigh. The corpse rotted slowly, gasses forcing it to expand before the hide split and it collapsed in on itself. Fur fell in, soft tissues degraded, and the white gleam of bone peeked out from underneath everything before time seemed to slow again. A pile of heavy black dirt had somehow accumulated underneath the skeleton that marked the final resting place of the younger dog, and Tag opened his mouth to demand what the hell was going on in front of him.

Something moved in the pile of dirt.

Tag stared as green shoots began pushing their way up through the rich loam that had become of the younger dog’s flesh. Faster and faster, a spreading carpet of grass eased the already-worn edges of the hard grey stone, and larger plants made themselves known over the tops of those shoots. A dizzying array of flowers opened before his eyes, turning the macabre scene into something much more peaceful. Even the light gentled as the greenery spread, softening its harsh rays and letting the heat shimmers dissipate in a fresh breeze that set the flowers waving gently.

A single shoot continued to grow, straight up through the midsection of the skeleton. Taller and taller it became, thickening and turning brown as more and more branches sprouted off of it. Tag squinted as the bark roughened and settled, whorls forming on the surface. It almost looked like the younger dog, the rough bark forming the glossy fur as creases in the tree’s trunk became the gentle face and wagging tail. The longer Tag watched, the more he could see the younger dog running over and around the tree until finally it, too, stopped growing, its spreading branches sheltering the ground underneath. On the one hand, it looked like a tree; on the other, Tag could see how a fork in the trunk made the younger dog’s ears, a small knot its wet nose, a gnarled bump its sitting haunches - a waving branch its tail.

The light above winked out, and Tag reached up to feel the tears running from his eyes.

“What-” he paused to clear his throat, vocal cords tight around some unknown obstruction. “What do you mean?”

Once again, his words fell flatly into the silence, not even the slightest trace of echo bringing them back to him. Another light flickered on, dimmer than any other he’d seen in this dreamscape, an illuminated a book sitting on a white pedestal. Uncertainly, Tag stepped forward and picked up the book; the title was in a language he couldn’t read, and when he touched it it fell open to a pair of Void-purple pages emblazoned with white text. Though slightly different than the title, he still couldn’t read the words written in two columns across the pages, with a third column seeming reserved for bunches of symbols scribbled aimlessly across it.

As he watched, a string of symbols disappeared from one column to reappear in the column full of random symbols, where it slowly broke apart until he couldn’t tell where the sequence had been anymore. The random symbols column continued to move, and as he watched a new string of symbols gradually assembled itself before disappearing from the pool of random symbols and appearing in the third column - the one with the fewest strings of symbols in it.

Tag watched more strings of symbols disappear, reappear, disassemble, and assemble themselves before finally closing the book and setting it back down on the pedestal - which immediately vanished in such a way that made him wonder whether or not he was ever supposed to have looked at it in the first place.

The darkness around him began to dissolve as Tag felt the dreamscape’s hold on him lessen. A surge of desperation had him stepping forward, clinging onto the remnants with a strength he didn’t he possessed.

“Will Puq be okay?!” He shouted, not caring as the tattered dreamscape let the sound escape into the real world as well.

There was a pause.

Okay

Okay

Okay

The echo was the last thing he heard as the dream dissolved completely and the light of the waking world filled his eyes.

Sam leaned back in his chair and gazed at the glass of whiskey in his hand.

He’d banished the other three to the outer office with Jenny when the noise got to be too much. The Puq had been their friend too, and none of them were taking it well; he didn’t blame them, but he also couldn’t take the volume and so he’d sent them out. Jenny had given him the nod before closing the door - she’d make sure they stayed out for a while.

Strong, dependable Jenny. He didn’t deserve her, he really didn’t; he’d seen the file floppy in his computer when he’d come in, the one she was only supposed to use if he was dead. Of course, now that he was alive again it put a huge target on his back until the government dealt with the Morellis, but he couldn’t find it within himself to care. He owed them for dying in the first place, and especially owed them for the Puq’s choice. Not the choice he made - for all Sam wasn’t the best guy, he’d never cheapen the other being’s choice like that - but the fact that he’d had to make a choice at all. That- that Sam owed the Morellis for.

We got it wrong every time.

Sam took a sip of his whiskey and grimaced; it didn’t taste quite right, but then he wasn’t drinking it for the taste. His alternate self, the one he’d spoken to in that weird fracture in time and space, had been right on the money. Sophia Morelli had been one hell of a dame, and he’d loved her more than was probably wise, given her family. He’d been crazy about her in the beginning, and she him - but it hadn’t lasted. They’d gotten married, sure, but barely a year in and she’d been trying to make him into someone he wasn’t - and then stepping out when he refused to compromise himself.

Maybe he could’ve made some concessions, made it last a little longer - but looking back on it, she was always going to leave him. The other two hadn’t been quite so dramatic, but he hadn’t been able to make them happy in the end either.

We got it wrong every time.

Every choice he’d made for love had come back around to bite him, one way or another. Going to Sophia had always been a gamble; he’d hoped that their past relations would be enough to bring the Morellis around to help with C-NACK88. He hadn’t exactly bargained on seeing Sophia herself there, but he couldn’t deny that his heart had clenched a little when she’d walked into the room. Just as beautiful as he remembered her, with a presence that couldn’t be denied. Not that Sam would be one to deny her anything, though he’d foolishly thought that negotiating with her would give him a better shot at getting co-operation from the Morellis.

He hadn’t even seen the goon walking up behind him; the black bag and blow to the head combination had come as a complete surprise. And yet some part of him hadn’t been ready to believe she’d actually do it, even after he woke up on the pier with his hands tied and a box of lead chained to one ankle. He grimaced and took another slug of his whiskey; the memory of the sickly panic crawling up his throat as he’d realized what she meant to do still made his hands shake if he thought about it too hard. Ever since his first trip to the Water planet, he’d always figured it would be what killed him.

And, on some level, he’d always figured it would be the Morellis who did the deed; he slid his eyes over to the now-defunct floppy disc. He wouldn’t have made the thing if he didn’t think the Family would need taking down a peg or twenty at some point, but he’d kind of figured on not being there to see it happen. There was something satisfying about the idea of the Morellis going up in smoke in front of his eyes, but deep down he knew that just meant someone else would rise up to take their place.

He hadn’t really planned on being around to see that either, but then it seemed like he hadn’t planned on a lot of things. Especially not the giant purple dumbass attached to his heart choosing Sam’s life over his own.

Sam drained his glass and poured himself another, tears stinging at his eyes as the thought was met with only silence. He’d never thought he’d get used to it, to the constant companionship and commentary from his…friend wasn’t a strong enough word, and soulmate was just a bullshit phrase that dime-novel romance serials used in place of people actually liking each other. The Puq had been his better half for less than a year, and while Sam hadn’t been very happy about the situation in the beginning, the Puq had never been anything less than a cheerful ray of sunshine the entire time he’d known him.

Even in the very beginning, when they couldn’t really communicate with each other very well and Sam had snarled and fought and denied the Puq access to the physical world at every chance he got, the spriggan hadn’t blamed him for it. Hadn’t gotten mad about it. And when the scientist had finally let them start really, properly talk to one another on Water, the first thing the Puq had done was forgive him for being an asshole about the whole thing. Neither of them had chosen their situation, and beating each other up over it was simply a waste of time and energy.

We got it wrong every time.

And that really was the kicker, wasn’t it. Sam stared moodily into his glass, swirling the amber liquid around the sides without sloshing it over. Neither of them had chosen the other, not in the beginning. The Company had been experimenting on every test subject it could get its hands on without anyone raising a stink, and they were the only survivors. If Sam hadn’t been caught, they would have never met, as simple as that.

And yet, the Puq did choose. When the time came, when it was Sam’s life or his - he chose. Sam wouldn’t demean his choice by saying it was the wrong one; if their positions had been reversed, he’d’ve made the same call. Every time, and without hesitation, Sam would have given up his own life for the Puq’s.

But the cards hadn’t fallen that way, and now Sam was sitting here alone with a drink in his hand and a hole in his heart and head where an immortal being made of purple-black crystal had once resided. No quiet remarks, no suggestions about what to do next; if he hadn’t been so damn determined to live and make sure the Puq’s deal was worth it, the silence might just be what killed him. The Puq’s absence was like the first time Sam’d lost a tooth; a gaping hole that he couldn’t ignore, probing it constantly with his mind and feeling it bleed every time he did so.

The Puq had chosen, eyes wide open, to give Sam his life. He’d thought that a three-times-divorced semi-alcoholic gumshoe from a planet with over a billion residents was worth giving up the rest of eternity. He’d kept his choice from the team, and when the time had come he’d gone willingly to…whatever came next for spriggans.

We got it wrong every time.

None of Sam’s ex-wives would have made that choice. He wouldn’t have wanted them to, even if they were presented with it; if it was their lives or his, he would always have picked theirs. None of the people Sam had chosen to associate with over his life would have made that choice, either. They weren’t bad people; most of them were pretty solidly decent folk who’d made the best of the situation the City had to offer them.

Maybe Sam hadn’t always made the right choices. Maybe he never had. Maybe the one he didn’t choose was the one who loved him best. Maybe it wasn’t the ones he’d picked, it was the one who’d picked him.

We got it wrong every time.

Sam looked down into his glass of whiskey, watching the liquid settle until he could see his own face reflected back in the dim lights of the inner office and feeling the tracks of fresh tears down his cheeks.

“This time,” he told his reflection “we got it right.”

Minerva Cain - Minnie, to her friends and workers - looked out over her bar with satisfaction.

It wasn’t the biggest bar on Void, nor the prettiest - but it wasn’t the dump Minnie had bought for a song, either. She’d sunk nearly all her savings into buying and rehabbing the place, and it looked like her work was about to start paying off. The crowd in the bar wasn’t exactly bustling, but it was still pretty sizable for a midweek day and not terribly rowdy.

Normally she’d have one of a half-dozen or so college kids sitting in the corner and playing whatever instrument they happened to be studying that semester - though she had told the kid studying bagpipes to either find another instrument or find another job - to provide the kind of ambience the building seemed suited for. She’d tried canned music for the first couple months but the acoustics had been all flat and no matter what it was, the music she’d played over the speakers ended up grating on the ear. So she’d re-balanced her budget and reached out to the local college to find some players who didn’t mind shit pay for doing something they would be doing anyway.

Tonight, though, was something different. One of her bartenders had come to her with the idea of “open mic nights,” letting anyone off the street have their shot at playing for at least a couple hours. She’d spoken with the rest of her crew and when they all had agreed it wasn’t a half-bad idea, she’d given it the go-ahead. No charge to play, but the house got half the tips and reserved the right to stop any performance at any time for any reason. She hadn’t had anyone try and get cute about that yet, but tonight was only the third open mic night since she’d inaugurated the practice.

Currently a half-decent violinist was sawing their way through a rendition of I Left My Love On Bloom that would have been utterly forgettable if the performer hadn’t managed to ruin the softest passages with a persistent squeaking. There were a few more hopefuls with cases on their tables and drinks in their hands, so Minnie hadn’t bothered to call a stop to the violin - one of the others would step up soon enough. Instead, she’d taken the place of one of the bartenders and sent him around to check on the patrons, make sure they were still satisfied and cut off anyone who needed cutting off.

She’d just finished pulling a half-dozen pints for a large table when a man came up and sat at the bar. The most immediately arresting thing about him was his hair; snow-white, it fell around his head like a cloud. Minnie sent the pints off with one of the waitresses and walked up to him, wiping off her hands on a towel. Closer to, he didn’t look that old; there were lines on his face - laughter, mostly, but also pain and grief - but he didn’t hold himself like an old man and his hands were still strong where they gripped the handle of an instrument case.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked, hands already going for the order book in her apron. She pulled it out, along with her stylus, and looked up to meet his eyes.

His eyes.

Where his hair marked him as old and his hands marked him as young, his eyes marked him as ancient. Minnie had met a lot of people - men, women, neither, both, other - in her time as first a bartender and then a bar owner, but she had never seen eyes like his. They weren’t magnetically stuck to her cleavage like so many other people’s were but looked at her steadily, and she could almost feel the weight of the years in his gaze. He looked old - but more than that, he looked tired, tired in a way Minnie had the gut feeling she never wanted to understand.

He responded politely and Minnie blinked, shaking herself out of her transfixation. “Sorry, didn’t catch that, you’d like…?”

His eyes crinkled a little but he didn’t laugh, a fact she found obscurely sad. “Two shots of whiskey, please, and a glass of water.”

She raised her eyebrow. “Two shots? Not a double?”

He nodded firmly. “Two shots. Separate glasses.”

Minnie shrugged and jotted it down for the system before reaching down and pulling two shot glasses out from under the bar and lining them up neatly in front of him. She raised an eyebrow at him as she half-turned towards the shelves of liquor behind the bar. “What kind of whiskey do you want? We got Bloom, we got Void, we got Lightning if you like static, I think I might even have a little bottle from Fire if that’s your taste-”

“Void. Cheapest rotgut Void you have,” he said, cutting across her spiel firmly but not rudely.

Minnie felt her eyebrow try and climb higher. “You sure? The stuff I got here’ll strip the enamel off your teeth and the lining out your stomach.”

He smiled a crooked smile at her, and she felt her heart clench inexplicably. “Sounds perfect.”

She shrugged and turned away from the displayed shelves of booze, instead reaching underneath the bar for a cheap, unlabeled brown bottle. The cap twisted off easily and she poured him his two shots neatly, making sure not to spill a drop on the bar top. She was pretty sure it wouldn’t actually eat through the composite, but better safe than sorry. The fumes were strong enough to make her glad of her precision anyway, and the old man got a nostalgic gleam in his eye as he grabbed one of the glasses and sniffed it.

“Yeah, that’s the stuff. How much?” He set the glass down again and fixed her with his penetrating gaze. Minnie shrugged.

“Call it on the house. I can get more of this stuff cheaper than I can get clean water piped down here.”

He pursed his lips for a moment before nodding to her and picking up one of the glasses. “To absent friends,” he intoned, and downed the glass in one smooth, unflinching gulp. He didn’t even cough afterwards, and Minnie had to be impressed. She’d tried at least a glass of every booze she stocked at one point or another, and that one never failed to make her try and hack up a lung when it hit bottom.

He set the glass down gently, but didn’t reach for either the other shot or the glass of water Minnie had added to his collection. Instead, he looked around at the crowd, eyes lingering on the other people nursing drinks and holding their instrument cases. When he spoke, it was without turning back to look at Minnie. “I remember this place having an open mic night. Looks like that’s still true.”

Minnie cocked her head. “Actually, it’s a new thing I’m trying. One of my crew recommended it to me, and this is the third time we’ve had it going.” A particularly heinous squeak of the violin made her cringe and the old man winced. “It’s gone better.”

Now the old man turned back to her, both eyebrows raised. “I remember I used to come here…probably more regularly than I should have, and play the mic. Didn’t Nico tell you when she sold you the place?”

Minnie’s brow wrinkled as she tried to remember. The name sounded familiar, but…“Nico Yelleuw? The lady who got murdered here?”

That got the old man’s attention, and his gaze snapped to hers as his brows furrowed. “What do you mean, murdered?” Both his hands were on the bar now, framing his collection of glasses. There was a tension to them, a readiness - but one Minnie suspected would not be aimed at her.

She shrugged. “Yeah, like fifty or sixty years ago or something. Supposedly some guy hopped up on the wrong prescription tore his way in after hours and wrecked both her and the bar.”

His lips compressed to a thin line. “What happened after?”

Minnie shook her head. “Way I heard it, they strung the guy’s doctor up in the courts and the guy himself headed off-planet ‘cause he couldn’t stand to be in the City any more. This place ended up getting sold to the City, who used it as a shelter for a bit until they didn’t need so many, then they sold it off to private interests.” She gestured vaguely at the well-disguised chinks in the wall where the main room had been portioned up before she’d renovated it.

“It’s been a cafe, a youth center, offices, you name it this place has probably been it. Nothing lasted more than a couple years, and by the time I bought it it was pretty much abandoned. I fixed it up, and well,” she waved to the room. Maybe it wasn’t the noisiest, busiest bar available, maybe it didn’t have a gimmick or a fancy set of rules for entry, but by the Void it was hers.

The old man shifted back on his stool, tension going out of his frame. One hand drifted down to the battered old instrument case as sorrow creased his expression. “I knew Nico would have sold the place by now, thought the new name was just part of that but - damn.” He heaved a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul. “You’ve done good with the place, kid,” he said frankly.

Minnie preened, just a little. “Thanks, doll.” She nodded to the case under his hand. “You planning on taking the stage tonight?”

He looked down, like he’d forgotten it was even there. He picked the case up in both hands and opened it up to reveal the brown-black wood and silver finishings of a clarinet. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I would.”

He sounded older in that moment than he had for the entire rest of their conversation, and her heart went out to him. “I’ll let the crew know, soon as the violin’s done it’s your turn,” she told him, and he shook his head.

“Nah, there were other people here before me, let them go first.”

It was Minnie’s turn to shake her head. “Nuh-uh. I own this bar, and what I say goes.” Besides, something in her gut told her that while the other musicians would have other chances to play on her small stage, the man in front of her would not pass this way again. It was something in how he’d reacted to the story about Yelleuw; his face didn’t look old enough to have known her personally but his eyes said otherwise.

He held up his hands, surrendering with a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Far be it for me to tell a lady how to run her own bar.”

“Damn straight,” Minnie retorted, unable to repress her own smile. She nodded to the old man and stepped off to let her crew know about the change in line up and deal with anything that had come up during her conversation.

Things had, of course - a patron had complained, one of the kegs was running low, several bottles had been emptied and needed to be replaced, and so on - and Minnie lost track of time as she immersed herself in making certain things were running smoothly. It wasn’t until an odd kind of hush spread across the bar that she remembered the old man and his clarinet.

When she looked over, he had indeed taken the stage. He’d pulled one of the tall stools they kept for performers up and was seated on it comfortably, like he’d always belonged there. There was something arresting about him, despite there being nothing overtly remarkable about his appearance. His clothes were quality, though worn to the point they looked like they’d fit no-one else. His shock of white hair gleamed in the track lighting, but that wasn’t it either.

Whatever it was, by the time he lifted the clarinet to his lips for the first note, everyone’s eyes had fixed on him and most of the regular noise in the bar had died out. It was as if everyone was holding their breaths, waiting for something.

And then he began to play.

He wasn’t a virtuoso by any means, one of those geniuses who could take an instrument and make it do things nobody would have believed them able to do. No, what captured the ear was the emotion. A river of notes carrying a sweet, elegiac sadness that took your breath away. A bittersweet, rueful riff, the understanding of regret stood like a rock in the flow, causing the song to curve around it, and it carried them all along with it.

Minnie couldn’t say how long the song lasted, only that when it was done did she come back to herself. She could feel the tracks of tears on her cheeks, and a glance around was enough to show her that she wasn’t the only one. Wiping her face discreetly, she had to jostle one of the waitresses to get her to take a glass of water over to the performance table. The woman started and hurried off, glass clutched like a lifeline in her hands. Before she could quite reach the table, however, the old man started the next song. This one was a little happier and a lot more wistful, and Minnie found herself blinking back tears once again.

It went like that for the entire night. Nobody left, and conversation was kept to quiet murmurs between neighbors. When the late shift arrived, the evening shift simply took off their aprons and sat at the bar, spellbound. Hours and hours past closing, and still the bar was open. People had fallen asleep at their tables, but not nearly as many as stayed awake and silent, listening to the music.

Finally, when the first rays of dawn were beginning to peek through the front window, the old man finished his last song and stood up off the stool with a fluidity Minnie would not have thought possible after spending so many hours in one position. She stared glassily, feeling almost drunk as he carefully and meticulously cleaned every section of the clarinet before nestling it back in its case. The clunk as he closed the lid, followed by the twin snaps of the latches, was enough to make her flinch in surprise, and she blinked herself a little more coherent as he walked over to the bar and set the case on top.

“Hey.”

His voice was almost unbearably gentle, and she couldn’t find it anywhere inside herself to summon up a smile as she walked over to him.

“What can I do?” That wasn’t quite the question she’d wanted to ask, but it was the one that had come out and it made his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“I’m going to leave this here; think you could find a home for it?” His voice was still that quiet, inexorable tone of gentle that nearly had her agreeing without thinking about what he was asking.

Nearly.

She blinked and shook her head, forcing her eyes to focus on him. “You sure?” she asked, still keeping her voice down.

He nodded, an odd light in his eyes. “I’m sure.”

She nodded back and reached out to put her hand on the case. “I promise I’ll find someone.”

He let out a long breath - not quite a sigh of relief, but in the same neighborhood. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

He nodded to her one last time and walked out onto streets free of garbage, where the wind whispered through large trees and children went about without fear. They were quiet in the early morning light, and she watched his departing form for a long time before looking back to the case still under her hand.

It couldn’t be that hard to learn, could it?

Slowly taking the case in both hands, she walked back to her office and fell asleep clutching it like a lifeline.

Tag stood at the window of his room and looked out at the rain falling gently on the grounds outside.

The subdued light highlighted the silver of his hair, and he sighed as he rubbed at his left arm. He’d known hours before the clouds had started to scud across the sky that it would rain today; the old break in his left forearm had started to ache painfully mid-morning and probably wouldn’t let up until the rain had passed. He walked over to a handsome rocking chair set in front of the fireplace in his room and sat down with a huff as his knees objected. It wouldn’t be long before his spine joined in on the chorus but for now he could relax some and enjoy the warmth of the fire in the hearth.

“I never thought I’d get this far,” he remarked to seemingly thin air.

“Thin air” rippled and pulled apart to reveal a tall figure shrouded in black veils and clad in shining silver armor. A shining silver crown crested the figures head, and its hands were empty. It walked over to stand beside Tag, unseen face also pointed toward the fireplace.

“I had never quite considered the possibility either,” his father said quietly, voice barely louder than the rain outside. He didn’t sound sad, exactly, though there was a note of wonder in that statement. If Tag had to guess, the best fit would be melancholy - though that was not quite it either.

Still, Tag could appreciate the sentiment and he felt his eyes crinkle as he smiled up at his dad. “What, never thought I wouldn’t accidentally trip and fall and break my neck before I got old?” he asked, unable to resist poking fun at the sober figure beside him. Asahel had done the best he could when he was making Tag, but Tag had never been graceful no matter how old he’d gotten. He still tripped over door frames and knocked his hips against anything even remotely the right height - only now, the bruises didn’t fade quite so quickly and spread larger than when he had been a young man.

His dad was quiet for a moment before responding, his tone still that same strange place between wonder and melancholy - with just a touch of despair. “I’d never really considered after. Any plans I had for the future stopped the day you set us both free.”

Tag could feel his face crumple as his smile faded into something more thoughtful. It was odd, to think of his body in that way; he’d never been the most at home in it, for all it had been made for him. But now that he took a moment, he could feel the aches in his knees, his hips, his fingers, feel the little zing of pain down his spine as he adjusted himself on the chair. The wrinkles on his face - he could swear that it had only been yesterday that he’d been twenty two, stumbling along in the wake of Bryn as they raced across planets to stop the Company from destroying entire worlds.

So much had happened since then, and yet- “Mine did too,” he admitted softly.

Silence hung in the room, heavy but not uncomfortable. Tag and his dad had settled enough of their differences long ago, and it was rare now for Tag to wish his father would go bother someone else. In fact, as he had gotten older, he’d started to seek out his father more and more. It got easier to speak to him, to have the kind of quiet conversations that someone in Tag’s diplomatic position could have with no-one else.

Tag exhaled deeply before waving one of the nearby chairs closer, breaking the silence with the shuff of its legs on the carpet. His psychic powers had been second nature to him now for decades; his acceptance of them had gone hand in hand with his acceptance of his father and it had taken time to work through everything between the two of them. Still, he used them more and more often these days as his own physical strength became inadequate to smaller and smaller tasks.

He reached over and tapped the chair lightly. “Have a seat, dad, you’re making me tired just looking at you.” His tone was light as he tried to ease the growing pall in the room. Heavy thoughts had their time, but he’d rather enjoy his father’s company.

His dad started, like he hadn’t noticed the chair coming closer, and paused for a moment before seating himself. The chair didn’t groan under his weight; for all his father wore armor everywhere, there wasn’t actually that much to his physical substance.

He leaned forward once he’d taken his seat, and regarded Tag for few seconds. “A lot of things make you tired these days.”

It was an observation, not a question, and Tag snorted. Apparently his dad was feeling particularly doom and gloom today, which Tag wasn’t about to let stand if he could help it. “That’s part of what sucks about getting old, Dad. You get tired quicker. Can’t spend all day running from giant scorpions and killer sharks anymore.”

There was a pause, and then an almost inaudible reply.

“I wouldn’t know.”

His dad’s voice was soft and genuinely sorrowful, and Tag glanced up at his face in surprise. “I thought the other Summoners aged? I mean, I know all the others on the Council with you died kinda gruesomely before they really finished their run, but they weren’t immortal?”

His father shrugged and splayed his hands. “I don’t know how long they would have lasted. The Continuum might have turned on them too or simply left them to wither, but I carved away my humanity to get you safely across the gate. There’s not enough left of me to find reprieve in death.”

Tag looked away from him, back into the flickering light of the fireplace. He’d asked his father once how he’d managed to send Tag across a gate that should have kept him out, and his father had answered him with an in-depth description of how he’d put almost all of his humanity into Tag. Knowing that his dad had literally carved pieces of himself out to give them to Tag had been…something. Sickening, to know how much his father had hurt himself on the quest for vengeance - but also just the tiniest bit heartwarming to know how much of his father he really had in him.

Something in his dad’s voice struck a chord, however; the fact that his father considered death to be a reprieve from the System spoke volumes. Then, too, Tag remembered the overwhelming relief that had come off Danny, Horace, and Sly when they’d finally slipped the bonds tying them to Slakta and this world. Granted, being tied inextricably to a narcissistic sadist for hundreds of years would likely wear on anyone’s nerves but - it did still beg the question.

Keeping his eyes towards the fire, Tag made sure his tone was as casual as he could make it when he ventured the question.

“What do you suppose comes next for me?”

The gentle crackling of the fireplace was all that answered him for a long time. Tag glanced over at his father after a moment, keeping his head forward while sliding his eyes over. His dad looked…pensive, for someone who didn’t really have a face any more.

“I don’t know.”

It was the answer Tag had been expecting, even if it wasn’t the one he wanted, and he huffed a sigh to go with his nod. Before he could speak, however, his father continued. “Before the gate was open, if you died - when you died - the Other that was you, who carried my essence, would shatter into hundreds of pieces. Everything that it had gained as a human would eventually erode away, and it would be returned to me in hundreds of thousands of pieces that I would re-assemble to try again. But all those deaths were violent things, and the gate was closed. There was nowhere for it - you - to go when it was the end of human life.”

Tag looked at his father for a long moment in silence. “And now?” he asked seriously, all casual pretense gone.

His father shifted uncomfortably, like he didn’t quite want to think about it. “Now I don’t know. Perhaps you will rejoin the Ink, perhaps not.”

Tag’s next question was as instinctual as his own heartbeat. “But what about Bryn?”

The warmth of their bond rested in the back of his mind, a solid thing built of years and experience and trust and the truest kind of love that comes from knowing another person’s flaws and deciding they were worth it anyway. There had been bumps along the way, it was true - Bryn had actually hit him with her staff at one point when he’d made a mistake shortly before her mother had returned to the Fire - but they’d come through it all in the end and Tag would rather give up his limbs and magic before he lost that bond.

His father turned to look at him, and Tag could feel the weight of his regard in realms beyond the physical. His father wasn’t exactly as psychic as Tag himself was, but the Ink - once Malice - gave him access to metaphysical realms human-bound Tag could not comprehend. He always knew when it was being used, however, which was what had let him know that his father had decided to drop by.

“I don’t know.”

Tag felt a moment of piercing disappointment - it was dumb, but his father had been alive for so long, and knew so much, he’d really thought he’d have an answer to this question - before his father’s next words wiped it away.

“Your bond is like nothing I’ve ever seen. No other Summoner-Parallel bond is as strong as yours, or as deep. She may very well take you with her when her time comes - or vice versa. But I think, whatever happens, wherever you go, you will go there together if you so choose.”

Tag felt his smile return and he leaned back into his remarkably comfortable rocking chair, weariness pulling at his bones.

“That’s all I wanted to hear.”

Sidhe Mac Aidiai brushed his hands nervously down his shirt to remove any wrinkles before knocking at the back door of Haven. It was his first day, and he was desperate to make a good first impression - Haven was his first job after nearly six months of unemployment.

The door popped open immediately to reveal a somewhat harrowed-looking man in a maroon button-down and black slacks. “Are you the new guy?” He asked without preamble, and all Mac could do was gulp and nod.

“Good, get in here, I need to get my daughter from daycare.” Without waiting for a reply the man turned and strode inside, and Mac scrambled to keep up.

Inside, there was a narrow bit of hallway that ended in a split between the kitchen and the front of the coffee shop. The walls of the hallway sported a number of coat hooks at various heights, some precariously tilted wire shelves, and a three-legged stool that looked like it had seen better days. The manager was already at the further end, poking his head into the kitchen and making some sort of enquiry that Mac wasn’t quite quick enough to hear. Whatever the answer was, the manager pulled back with a snort before abruptly turning back to Mac.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be rude even if I’m in a hurry. The name’s Matt Vancil, manager of this fine establishment, and normally I would show you around but - ”

“But you have to pick up your daughter from daycare,” Mac said, eager to show he’d been listening.

Mr. Vancil gave him a piercing look, like he couldn’t decide if Mac was trying to make fun of him or not, and Mac shrank under the scrutiny. “Yes, that. Which is why Rex - ” the last word was shouted towards the front of the store, and Mac jumped at the unexpected noise. “ - will be showing you the ropes instead. Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite.” He paused for a second. “…Much.”

Mac was saved from wondering what that meant by what was possibly the strongest person he’d ever seen walking into the little hallway from the front of the café. Her bright red hair shone in the fluorescent lighting, and he could feel his eyes get bigger with each step she approached. She stopped in front of Mr. Vancil and crossed her arms, apparently not noticing Mac from where he stood in the shadow of the larger man.

“Well, what do you want? Baxter’s decided to start fiddling again, and I have a line of unhappy people waiting for their espressos.”

Mr. Vancil jabbed a careless thumb in Mac’s direction. “Look, I need you to look after the new guy and show him around until I get back with Claire - ”

“What happened to Claire?” Rex demanded, her tone sharpening, and Mr. Vancil sighed like his soul was slipping out of his body.

“She bit the caretaker again. I’m betting it’s the schedule I gave them - I give them the schedule for a reason but do they listen to me? Noooo I’m only her father, I can’t know her preferred schedule for the day, so of course they get to ignore what I give them and are surprised when she bites them for acting out of turn.”

Rex reached over to pat him sympathetically on the shoulder while he rubbed a hand over his head. “Yeah, those people really haven’t got it figured out. Go on, I’ll hold down the fort for a bit and make sure the new kid stays out of trouble.”

Mac was torn between relief and annoyance at the grateful look Mr. Vancil shot at Rex before heading back out the door he’d just admitted Mac through. On the one hand, it was a distinct relief to know he wouldn’t be thrown into the deep end without any explanations with the expectation he’d do everything perfectly the first time. On the other hand, there was the insinuation that he’d get into trouble if left unsupervised - which, while probably true, was mildly insulting when explicitly stated.

Still, he didn’t say anything as Rex turned to give him a slow once-over, just straightened up and tried to arrange his face into an expression of “I am very happy to have a job here and am eager to start” rather than “I am desperate and pathetically eager to please.” He wasn’t quite sure if he managed it, but Rex simply snorted and gestured for him to follow her.

“C'mon kid, I’ll show you have things work around here.”

Without waiting to see if he’d follow, she started back down the corridor and turned towards the kitchen. He hurried after her, cursing under his breath as he tripped on someone’s bag that was jutting out from the wall a bit. It was much more solid than it looked, and clanked ominously when it moved. Plus now his toe really hurt as he rounded the corner and nearly ran into Rex, who was standing in the door leading to the kitchen with an amused expression.

“Easy, kid, we’re not going to fire you on your first day.” She patted his shoulder with a firm clap, nearly buckling his knees with the force of it. She was much stronger than she looked - and she looked plenty strong.

So saying, she turned back to the kitchen and pushed the doors open. A waft of chocolate-scented air swirled out, along with a gust of warmth. Mac wasn’t hungry, but his traitorous mouth decided to start watering anyway; whatever was cooking in the kitchen smelled so good. A tall man wearing a white shirt, a hairnet, and a chef’s apron stood in front of some industrial sized ovens that were apparently the source of the wonderful smell as he checked a tray full of pale cookies.

Rex gestured at the man. “New kid - what is your name anyway? - this is Puq Haugen. He and his brother Sam run the back of house back here. Puq’s the baker - he makes all the desserts and pastries we sell out of the case in the front. Sam,” she raised her voice on the last word, and a clatter of dishes heralded a somewhat shorter and thinner version of the baker wearing a grubby grey top and black pants walking out of what was clearly the dishpit area, “is the guy who washes all the dishes. Without him, he’d all be up to our asses in shit.”

The man in the grubby shirt gave an ironic bow as his brother put the pan of cookies back in the oven and started another timer. “Yep. That’s me. Dish cleaner extraordinaire. Best man for the job, and all that.”

Sam’s voice was bitterly sarcastic, but his brother laughed as he approached the group and slung an arm over his shoulders. “Don’t mind Sam,” Puq advised, apparently noting Mac’s wide eyes. “He’s just mad because someone managed to glue a fork to a plate earlier and nearly broke the wash machine.” Sam seemed about to make a comment, but Puq’s hand snaked up to cover his mouth. “Nope, that’s the real reason and I know it! Don’t worry, I’ll give him a cookie from the latest batch and that’ll sweeten him right up,” Puq said conspiratorially to Mac, and Sam threw up his hands and stomped back into the dish area while Mac tittered nervously.

“So, um, you two are brothers?” he asked, desperate to clear the lingering sourness in the air.

Puq nodded, grinning hugely, before leaning forward again. “Hey, do you want to know something that’ll really spin your noodle? I’M the older brother!”

Laughing, the baker turned away and began adding ingredients to a truly enormous bowl. Rex patted Mac on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about those two. It might not seem like it, but they really do love each other. Puq was down for three days once with a cold, and Sam nearly fretted himself to flinders over not being by his brother’s side after just the first day. The Captain sent him home and told him not to come back unless it was both of them.”

“‘The Captain’?” Mac questioned warily, and Rex waved a careless hand.

“It’s what everyone calls Matt Vancil because one of his favorite catchphrases is "I run a tight ship around here,” the big softy.“ Rex snorted, and turned to march out of the kitchen, her long strides eating up the ground much faster than Mac could walk and he ended up half-jogging after her.

Back through the doors of the kitchen, out to the little cross hallway, and then just before they walked into the front of the shop, Mac noticed a picture of a woman with a sequined frame hanging by the doors to the café proper. "Who’s she?” he called, catching Rex just before she pushed to doors open to the front. “Is she Mister…the Captain’s wife?”

Rex checked at the door and turned, laughing when she caught sight of the picture. “No, she’s a corporate bitch named Shavanaugh who likes to make trouble every now and again by coming in with "surprise” inspections and new “regulations” that aren’t actually a part of the rule book.“ Mac made a puzzled noise, and Rex gestured to the laminated poster directly to the left of the picture. "We’re a franchised offshoot of The Company Coffee, see, and she’s some corporate bigwig who can’t stand us. So we have the picture up so everyone knows what she looks like whenever she takes it into her head to come around and start nitpicking.”

That made sense, except - “Then why the sequins?” He asked in bewilderment, and Rex cackled.

“Take a closer look. They’re novelty sequins I got from a buddy’s stag party.”

Mac looked closer, and sure enough the sequins were in the shape of tiny dildos. He felt his eyes get even wider. “And Mister - The Captain -”

“He’s the one who suggested it in the first place,” Rex responded gleefully, her grin stretching from ear to ear, and Mac laughed incredulously. To put dildo sequins on a picture of someone from corporate who hated your guts was hilarious but also possibly a bad move if she ever saw it.

He didn’t have any more time for questions, however, as Rex pushed her way through the doors leading to the front of the shop and he was obliged to follow her.

Haven was a cozy little café located not too far from the university grounds. The walls were paneled in warm wood and students of all stripes huddled close together around the outlets and fireplace. Bags of schoolwork turned the floor into a hazardous maze navigated best in mincing steps, and the whole place hummed with conversation. The counter that the doors let out behind was a clean white, leading to a glass case that was remarkably free from fingerprints and - currently - a little on the empty side. Dominating one end of the counter was a complex system of sleek metal tubes, whirling dials, hissing noises, and ominous jets of steam.

Standing in front of that imposing edifice was a young man with a brace on one knee. He was handsomely rugged, a short beard and tousled brown hair complementing the strongest jawline Mac had ever had the fortune to witness, and he had a look of triumph on his face as he turned to look at Rex.

“Hah! See? Told you I could fix it, and everyone got their espressos in half the time it would’ve taken the original machine to brew them.”

Rex rolled her eyes in response. “Yeah, after waiting double the amount of time it would have taken to get the machine started normally, Baxter! Think before you start a project, nerd.”

The man had the grace to look contrite, and Rex turned back to Mac. “Meet Baxter Brautigan. He’s our resident egghead and the only one allowed to work the espresso machine anymore.”

Baxter looked thoughtful. “Well - ”

Rex rounded on him. “Nope. Nuh-uh. The damn thing nearly cooked all the flesh off Avery’s hand the last time he messed with it; you upgraded it, you have to work it. At least until you can make it safe for us non-engineers to touch again, though I doubt OSHA will ever approve of your designs.”

Baxter deflated and mumbled something Mac couldn’t hear, and Rex tugged him over to the counter. “This is where you’ll spend most of your time working. Here’s the menu for keying most things into the system - you can use my employee number until the Captain gets back to give you your own. Prices are on the board behind you, and we don’t accept foreign currencies. Any questions?”

“Mac,” he replied, and she raised an eyebrow inquiringly. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Sidhe Mac Adiai, but everyone calls me Mac. You, er, asked for my name earlier…” he trailed off in embarrassment as Rex continued to just look at him for a long moment.

Finally a smile broke through her stern look and she nodded as the bell above the door tinkled. “Well then, Mac, you ready to help your first customer?”

Mac nodded, and turned to face the two people who had just walked in. One was a tall, gangly man with hair almost as messy as Baxter’s and jug ears; he walked a step to the left and behind easily the most beautiful woman Mac had ever seen. Her hair was brown and just wavy enough to catch the perfect highlights from the indirect lighting above her. Her brows were perfect over blue eyes, and her lips were a perfect red bow.

Mac was brought out of la la land when Rex kicked him discreetly but painfully in the ankle. “Stop drooling over her,” she commanded out of the side of her mouth. “That’s Bryn Cosaint, the ambassador’s daughter, and the man with her is her bodyguard, Tag. He will take you out without a second thought if you try and come on to her.”

Mac felt his heart sink. “Really?” he asked back, not bothering to keep his voice down.

The question was a bit louder than the general hubbub, and the gangly man looked up in surprise - only to immediately trip over someone’s bag. He went down in a heap, papers flying everywhere, and the general noise level rose several notches as the students whose papers now decorated the floor began berating the apologetic-looking Tag as the latter tried desperately to pick up the mess without messing up anything and Bryn stepped in to defend him.

Rex snorted. “Nah, I’m only making fun. They’re just regular folks, really - but seriously, hit on customers outside of working hours.”

Mac nodded and turned to take the first order of his new job.

He rather thought he was going to like it here.