Content Warnings

Gender Dysphoria
Mind control / mind-altering magics, and discussions thereof
Some particularly nasty intrusive thoughts
Internalized sanism
Accidental deadnaming (very brief)
Self-loathing / guilt

The township of Stilton flinches as I exit the medical shack. Whether out of guilt or fear, I couldn’t possibly say. The destruction isn’t so bad as I’d have dreaded, but worse than I’d have hoped. A few shacks are destroyed—their ramshackle constructions paid for in ease of demolition. At least they’ll be easy to rebuild, I suppose. The greater damage of whatever occurred here last night is writ on the faces of the people. After the speech and following chaos at the festival yesterday, I’d imagine much of Marble City panicked, but the people here are outright distraught. Is that a good or ill omen?

Regardless, Alabastra strides through the community in confident struts. A few clear out of her way as she goes. That is certainly fear.

Mid-walk, I ask, “Do we have a plan?” Though the possibility that the Lupines noticed and excised the tracking gem from the watch was always there, I didn’t think for a second they would have the intuition and means to do so this quickly.

“Nope.” And it seems Alabastra didn’t either. At least she’s being honest. “We’re just gonna wing it.” She’s done so much ‘winging’ as of late, she could be an aviatrix. I suppose I’ll save my catastrophizing about our vanishingly thin prospects for after we’ve checked on the individuals Alabastra needs to touch base with. Not that it will stop me from thinking about it.

She leads us to the center of town, where the gangly form of the squatters’ leader Graolo waits, shooing away some beggar I don’t recognize as we approach.

“Alabastra…”, he begins. The graven weight of his voice is deep enough to sink into the sea.

“Graolo”, she says, curtly. “Somethin’ you wanna say?” Her arms cross, and she taps her foot expectantly.

The man turns to me. I freeze up slightly. He steps forward, and reaches out a hand to shake. “I… on behalf of the township of the community of Stilton, I would like to apologize, Mr. Bromley.” That causes another flinch in me. Alabastra leans forward and whispers something in the old man’s ear. He nods, and corrects, “Ms. Bromley.”

I look bewildered at Alabastra, throat seizing. She shrugs with a guilty smile. “Well I didn’t tell ya to make that leap, Grao.”

And, damn it, now that this buffoon put the article in my head, I can’t get it out. Agh, it’s just too easy. It shouldn’t be possible for such a simple, ridiculous little change to affect me so greatly.

The fact that it does at all, is— if I weren’t so furiously stubborn I might call it ‘telling‘. It’s as if, now that I can’t deny them, these feelings are like a virus. I can’t get them out of my system.

“Ah. Apologies again, Something-Else Bromley”, he says. As apologies go, this seems to be going terribly. Not that I am one to judge. “We did not… intend to… ah… that is to say… We believed Mr. Vail in his insistence that you were a dangerous individual, but only some in our community thought that meant to, ah. Bring you to the end of the road, as it were. Nevertheless, we apologize for letting Mr. Vail spread his very bad message to the easily frightened of us.” For a man his age, sheepishness looks outright silly on him.

Past him, the burnt wooden remains of some sort of fire pit, or effigy, or— or stake lie smoldered and charred. If the implications are true, that seems completely unforgivable to me. Though, asking for forgiveness for the unforgivable has become a habit of mine lately. But I’m nowhere near wanting this man’s apologies, let alone accepting them, nor do I even care much for his feelings or predicament.

But for Alabastra’s sake, and her position here, I say only, “I see. Your apologies are… acknowledged.” I stare down as his outstretched hand.

He puts it away after a moment, and capitulates with, “If it makes you feel better, you were not convicted. And even if you were, I would have done my utmost to ensure you were only banished—and if Alabastra had not shown I’m sure we would have stopped the madness before the burns were too—”

“Graolo“, Alabastra seethes.

The old man shrugs. “Sorry.” Then he snaps in sudden realization. “That is reminding me, however! There is something else we should be discussing before you leave!”

“Shoot.”

With a leathery, wrinkled finger, Graolo points to a particular shack in the shanty town. “In all the commotion I forgot to tell you—Mrs. Matricia’s daughter returned the other day!”

That was the dwarven half-dragon girl who’d gone missing, wasn’t it? Then just like Thassalia, she’s come back from wherever she went missing from. Almost certainly too large a coincidence to not be the same cause—perhaps even the same place. Just when I thought we were out of leads.

The others seem to share my sudden interest. “Returned…?”, Alabastra says for all of us. “From where?”

“She is… not saying. But it is… perhaps easier to see for yourself. Go on.”

“Sure thing”, she says. Then, with one last look to the community leader, she says, “We’re gonna have long chat soon about what went down last night. And it’s not gonna be pretty, Graolo.” It seems to almost pain her to say that. I wonder how long she’s been assisting this place. What her hopes were for it. I imagine this wouldn’t be half-so difficult if she hadn’t put a piece of herself into this underground neighborhood. I’m suddenly reminded of the folly of caring.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a habit I’m shaking, this time.

Graolo nods, and says, “We will come to understandings. Apologies once more.” And he again gestures the way to the dwarven woman.

We walk across the poor man’s promenade. My first time here, I’d wondered about the history of this strange little corner of the underburrows, but was too in my own head to ask. For too long since the watch, curiosity was locked from me, but I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

So I ask. “Precisely how long has Stilton been in place?”

Alabastra gives me a small appraising glance, as if my curiosity is enough to gain her approval. Gods, she has become excessively easy to please. Recent events have perhaps set the bar too low. “‘Bout a decade. Lil’ under, maybe.” Then she grows remorseful. “Damn shame place like this wasn’t around when I was a kid. Mighta saved me a lotta trouble.” That seems like an almost pointlessly myopic what-if scenario. Not that I have a leg to stand on.

“True…”, Faylie begins, “But, then you might not have met us! Sometimes you gotta trust the process!”

“Don’t think that woulda cheered me up when I was eatin’ moldy trash bread, Lightning Bug.”

The faun’s ear duck low, chastened by the reminder. “Oh. Right… sorry.”

With a turn on one heel, Alabastra faces us all. “Okay”—she claps once—”We can’t all be on the apology train. We’ve laid the ground work, alright? We’re all sorry, and we all love each other very much, and if we get stuck on that we’ll be here all day.” I decide not to object at her exaggerations; she’s clearly heading somewhere with this. “Meanwhile, these Lupine fucks’ll grind us into the dirt. We’ve gotten our cries out, and we’ll keep gettin’ ’em out, but I need all of us focused. Whatever we gotta do to get there, capiche?”

Though letting myself think in terms of single-minded focus is dangerously close to the mindset I’d only recently freed myself from, she isn’t wrong. And besides, if I’m honest with myself, I wasn’t nearly so focused as I insisted, when I was stuck. Before, that sense of duty was just an excuse to hurt everyone.

But now? It’s necessity. We didn’t come this far to slip up to the likes of Lyla Serrone. “I agree. We should save further sessions of excessive emotion for after this problem is solved”, I say.

“That’s a fair compromise.” Alabastra looks down at Faylie, who’s still fretting over her little verbal misstep. “Bug?”

Though she seems hesitant to acquiesce, Faylie does eventually nod. “Okay.” Then a frantic current breaches her again. “But, what if I mess up again and—”

“Firefly.” Alabastra puts a hand to her shortest girlfriend’s neck. “Don’t worry about somethin’ so hard that you make it happen.” If she were speaking to anyone else, that would be figurative, but with how Faylie’s magic works, manifesting her own failures might just be a literal concern.

Faylie breathes once through her nose. “Okay.” She fakes a smile, fingers to the dimples of her cheeks. “Positive thoughts…!”

“Attagirl.” Alabastra leads us on to the shack.

The hut we arrive at is as dismal as its surroundings, save for the attempt at a garden out front; the entrance is ringed by metal fencing, and glowing mushrooms of dwarven culture from the depths of The Deep grow in illuminating rows.

Shortly after Alabastra knocks on the door, it opens to reveal the dwarven woman Faylie and Tegan had been comforting the last time we were down here. She is stocky and stands just under five feet, her orange hair worked into an elaborate and theatric hairdo, and her pudgy face is sunken with recently-relieved worry. Past her, the interior is a sheet-metal domicile of scavenged and mildew-rotted furniture, but personal effects are hung over the makeshift home all the same. A cloth hand fan, photographs on the wall, a relief in the form of a hammer, little knickknacks and pieces, and signs of a child’s naive and innocent additions—crayon drawings and stuffed animals.

When she opens the door, the dwarven woman’s still-trepidatious glance turns bright at Alabastra, then darkens again when it passes over me. I tuck behind Tegan in response. The mother says, “Oh, well my word, Alabastra Camin and her little band of troublemakers.” There’s an edge to her voice, and I quite can’t tell if it’s playful or malicious.

“Mrs. M!”, she says with a clap. “We heard your daughter came back! That’s great news!”

“Yes, well, no thanks to you lot.” Ah. Malicious, then. At least I think.

Alabastra leans herself against the side of the shack doorframe, rubbing one shoulder. She sucks air through her teeth as she says, “I mean, it’s not like we’ve been sittin’ on our asses, Mrs. M—”

“Language!”, the dwarf interrupts, one finger out in the rogue’s face. Then she harumphs, too aggravated to be angry at the rogue for just cursing. “You certainly could’ve fooled me! Gallivanting with your little pet vampire instead of finding my daughter.”

As if I needed more to feel guilty about; it would feel worse if I believed it. After all, I’m quite sure if the thieves had a lead on where the girl went, they’d have abandoned me long ago.

The rogue seems to concur. “Was all the same journey, Mrs. M. I was half-expectin’ we’d find your daughter at the end of this trail. We didn’t stop lookin’ for her, it was just a bit of wind-up.” When the dwarf says nothing in response, Alabastra continues, “We were wonderin’ if we might talk to her about—”

“Ab-so-lutely not!” Her arms cross out back-to-front like the request left a bad air. “My sweet Savina has been through enough! She doesn’t need to be interrogated! Especially if half of what they’re saying about this new plague is true.”

Nothing travels faster than bad news, but lies gives it a run for its money. I should likely be more surprised than I am that Serrone’s little speech and the events that followed have already started to seep into this city like the smog in the air. Ignorance will choke this place faster than factory run-off could.

Turned angry where once she’d been conciliatory, Alabastra puts a harsh palm to the side of the wall. “Claudine. Not a fu— er, frickin‘ word of it is true. And even if it were, that still means that if we don’t find out what happened to Savina, a lotta folk might get hurt. I don’t care much that you’re angry at me, but I know you don’t want that.” A coolness dulls the rising smoke of her fury, as Faylie pats the small of her back. She continues in a shrunken voice, “Please. Just a few questions. You can listen in if you don’t trust us. It’s just— it’s important.”

Matricia, or Claudine as the rogue’s revealed, considers the four of us for a long while. Then she all but collapses into herself, broken apart by some internal thought. “Oh, what am I saying. You’ve put too much of yourself into this place to start scheming now, Camin. Fine.” One hand goes to her hip. “We’ll talk outside, in the open. And know I’m watching you.” She turns around, and calls out behind her, “Savina, sweetie, come here a moment!”

Behind her, a smaller dwarven girl hugs her mother’s leg, long red hair reaching all the way to the floor and covering most of her face—only one blue eye stares back at us. With how enclosed this space is, and how little time it took her to step forth, it seems likely that she was listening in the whole time.

“Hiya, kiddo”, says Alabastra.

The girl shrinks further behind her mother in response. The elder Matricia says, “Savina, these ones are safe, alright? You can talk to them.” The mother saves a cold look of caution for just the four of us.

With small and careful steps, the girl swings around to the front entrance, eyes cast down in a haunted glower. “Um. Hello…”, she says in tiny, tiny words.

Alabastra bends down over one knee. “Been through some rough stuff, huh kid?” The girl’s darting eyes is all the answer the rogue needs. She chuckles once, and points backwards. “Us too.”

Faylie adds, “We’d really like to know where you went. Do you remember?”

The girl gives an almost imperceptible nod.

Claudine says to the four of us, “She’s been like this ever since she came home. She used to be such a gregarious girl…”

We haven’t actually gotten the full story yet. “What exactly were the circumstances of her return?”, I ask. The woman flinches at my words. Upon second thought, perhaps it’s better if I simply keep my mouth shut for the remainder of this.

But she answers, “Well, the strangest thing—she was brought back by a Sable Guard. He’d said she was at a care facility. I’m not sure what that meant. A hospital, perhaps? And she was tired, but looked well-cared for. Clean, in fresh clothes, and there were no signs that she’d been hurt.”

Alabastra interjects, “Hold on—there were Sable Guard down here?” That’s what she took from that?

“That’s right. Didn’t catch the gentleman’s name, but it seemed he was following some sort of orders. No telling who’s…”

“Eh, I might have an idea.”

If Lyla Serrone and the Lupines are openly employing Sable Guard in this business, in whatever this ‘care facility’ is, then it isn’t exactly secretive, it seems. But if that’s the case, then why not inform the girl’s mother? Clearly at some point they knew to bring her back here, after all.

Tegan, meanwhile, has caught a distant glare in her eyes since the words ‘care facility’ were uttered. No telling if this is similar to her own ordeal, but she certainly seems displeased by the reminder. Since I’m not contributing anyways, I inch closer to the knight in a gesture of solidarity, brushing a shoulder against. Though I’m not exactly adept at being caring or comforting, the quick dart of her eye tells me she’s gotten the message.

Looking back to the child, Alabastra says, “How ’bout it, kiddo? Anything you can tell us?”

In tiny movements, the girl shakes her head, quiet as a mouse. It takes more willpower than it should to stop myself from groaning. She’s a child, you contemptible churl.

Dejected, the rogue looks back to her faun girlfriend, clearly pleading for help. The faun steps forward, puts a hand on Alabastra shoulder, and says, “How about… you tell us about those fun little trinkets you were collecting?”

Savina’s eyes dart a moment, and she shakes her head. “Can’t…”, she whispers.

“You can’t? Why not?” Faylie leans forward, hands clasped behind her back playfully. “Because I’d really love to hear about them.”

“Said no…”, the dwarf girl says through a clenching throat.

“Who said no?!”

The girl only stares at the floor.

Faylie and Alabastra stand, turning to the less social of our pack. The faun looks lost for a moment, until a thought turns a light in her eyes. “Okay, um, I have an idea, but…” She looks back to the mother. “Excuse us for one second.” And she ushers us away from the building.

“Glowbug?”, Alabastra begins once we’re out of earshot, as curious about this turn as I am.

“Well, I’m not sure you’ll like it, is the thing.” Faylie’s pushing her index fingers together. “I wanna try a spell?”

Understandably, when an idea is so poor Alabastra might not like it, the rogue crosses her arms in suspicion. “What’s the spell?”, she says in a leading voice, at least willing to countenance.

“Well…”, Faylie says, pitching upward, “It’s… technically an enchantment… but only technically!”

The half-elf blinks rapidly. “You wanna cast an enchantment on a child?!”

The faun stomps one hoof. “I said only technically! I’m obviously not gonna read her mind or charm her, Allie!”

My breath catches slightly at the realization that she’s not advocating for something blatantly heinous out of the blue. Divorced now from my thoughts-in-stasis, I think freely back to that encounter with the Partisan. Faylie was rather quick to employ these kinds of magics, to Alabastra’s chagrin.

“Is there something I’m missing here?”, I ask. “I’m not exactly a fan of charms either, but—”

Alabastra says, “Oh, they’re Bug’s favorite!” The chloric snark in her voice matches the roll to her eyes.

Faylie turns, hands on her hips. “Come on, Allie, I just said it wasn’t anything bad!” With a side-glance to me she elaborates, “Enchantment magic is normal to the fae—celebrated, even! But here in Anily everyone always gets all weird and squishy about it. Humans especially! It’s really not as bad as you say it is.”

“My half-human side is not why I ain’t a fan of charms, Bug. And you know that!” It does strike me as strange that she would be quite so opposed to enchantment magic; is her Insight not just one step removed, really? If this is some hard line she’s drawn, it seems a touch arbitrary to me.

Tegan groans. “Can we please not have this argument again?”

I hadn’t noticed the landmine under my feet until I stepped on it. Too late now. I may as well get some answers, though this seem a touch too sensitive a topic for Alabastra to broach her side of things.

Instead I look to Faylie. “What do you mean by ‘celebrated’?”

With wild gesticulations, Faylie explains, “Faeries don’t really consider lies, or trickery to be, like, wrong? The way mortals do, I mean—almost no Fae really cares about honesty. And mind-altering magic is the same. A pact or a geas can even be a positive thing, like a partnership vow, or a parlay! It’s just kinda expected that when you’re in the Wilds, your head’s gonna get played with! Not like here, where humans basically do the same thing, but pretend they don’t because it’s not with magic.”

I was aware the quirks and morals of the Faewilds were different from ours, so it shouldn’t surprise me that their taboos, or lack thereof, are too, yet I can’t quite wrap my brain around what a culture like that would look like. And I’m not so sure about her insinuation on human cultures, either. I think I’d need that one talked through.

“Faylie.” Alabastra drops the nicknames. “We’re not in the Faewilds.”

“I know!”, she turns and pouts. “How many times do I have to say that I’m not gonna do anything bad! I don’t wanna take control from her, I wanna give it! Don’t you trust me, Allie?” She actually sounds a touch wounded.

Alabastra sighs, squeezing her eyes closed. A nod follows, conciliatory to her lover. “I do. Of course I do. Just—” She opens her eyes again, now looking guilty. So much for not apologizing. “What… what are you gonna do?”

The faun finally smiles again—and I see why Alabastra would work so hard to ensure she doesn’t stop. I can’t pretend that it isn’t gut-wrenching when she isn’t. “It seems like she’s having trouble telling us what happened, so, I’m basically gonna try to, um. Cast a spell that melds her mind with some of my magic. Give her control over an illusion, so she can show us where she went instead of having to talk! Like a way better drawing!”

I lean in. That’s a fascinating-sounding spell, and one I’ve not quite heard of. “Have you cast this before?”

“Well, no. I’d be trying that thing I mentioned to you earlier.”

“So, you don’t want to charm a child, you just want to try experimental magic.” I massage the above my eye. In all the sentiment of the past twenty or so hours, I’d forgotten how confounding they could still be.

Obviously, now that I’m the one with the objections, Alabastra says, “Hmm. Guess I’m willin’ to give it a shot.”

Faylie pumps in fist in excitement. “Yes!”

Someone has to be the realist. “And how are you going to convince her mother to let you do this?”, I say.

“I’ll think of somethin'”, says Alabastra. And without further elaboration, she turns back to the front of the shack. Some things never change. To Claudine Matricia, she says, “Alright, so, my favorite faun here has an idea—”

The mother stands tapping her foot. “We live in a cavern. I’m dwarvish. I heard your conversation.” Well I suppose that solves that.

Alabastra claps her hands together once, placing the clasped fingers over her mouth in shocked shame. And after a pause she says, “… Would you—”

“You will absolutely not be casting magic on my daughter!”

A genuine sigh leaves the rogue. “Mrs. M, it… it could help her. You said she wasn’t talkin’, right? We just wanna help her communicate again.”

The woman looks like she’s about to say something, when the girl tugs at the bottom of her mother’s skirt. Claudine looks down, and she’s met with a hopeful little smile on her daughter’s face, pleading without words. The woman’s heart all but visibly breaks in two, and her shoulders lax in defeat. “Oh, for pity’s sake, fine.” Then she turns to the faun. “But if you hurt my baby girl, there are no Gods that will save you.”

Faylie steps forward. She produces her cards, fanned out in front of her, and pulls three from the middle of the deck. The rest disappear in flash of smoke, and her unique brand of spellcraft weaves its way up from the remaining painted icons. Emanating in space, a wand-wielding Magician is flanked either end by a single floating sword on his left, and two children surrounded by six cups on his right. And Faylie cants, “OST QUID VIS VID.” The magician grips the sword in his free hand, and raises it into the sky, as he wooshes the wand around himself, and the six cups circle him in an orbit. The light-formed children run in playful circles around the shining mage.

And the real-world mage beams a massive smile down at the real-world child. Above the tiny conjured sword, a multicolored swirl of incandescence twists around itself.

“Go on”, Faylie says, “It’s yours.”

The girl reaches forward, her hands skimming the edge of the light, and she seems to intuit what potential she holds between her fingers. The light reshapes at the girl’s grasp. Slowly, at first, bending and twisting, forming a perfect sphere. Then she stretches it into a more oblong shape like a gourd, then folds it in on itself in a twisted figure-eight.

Faylie claps her hands together excitedly, leaving her cards locked in mid-air in an absurd position. “Okay, let’s do something fun first!” The girl smiles back at her, a tiny little ember of joy stoked in her eyes. Faylie is far better at this than I would’ve been. I’ve never been good with children; hells, even when I was one, if my barely-remembered years are any indication. She’s a veritable virtuoso, compared to me.

The dwarven girl nods excitedly at the faun’s words, and the light takes on new shapes and colors, twisting, writhing, becoming something new—a painting in motion. A green globule of magic reshapes into a mighty dragon, that beats its wings over the flattening and expanding field of glowing energy, restructuring into a townscape. Homes and buildings carve themselves out of the illusion at the girl’s turning and prodding. The illusory dragon flies in circles over the village, and lands gently in the center of the town, where little simulacrum people, undetailed like luminescent stick figures, circle around and cheer for the oversized lizard.

And the girl giggles.

Faylie looks up at Claudine, and gives a little thumbs up. Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile that this sweet and genuine faun is also the kind of person that charms people without remorse and who’s first answer to any escalating conflict is incineration.

As for the girl; I may not be good with children, but this is somewhat causing me to reconsider my stance on them being a nuisance better avoided. There’s a sweet innocence in her that draws something damnably close to a smile out of me. Something I’m not sure I can relate to, but wish I’d had, once. It feels so trite and simple to reduce my problems down to a stunted childhood, but I can at least admit that it certainly didn’t help.

“You’re doing so great!”, says Faylie. Then she shifts down, meeting the young girl’s eyeline. “Okay… now, if you don’t mind… could you maybe show us where you’ve been?”

Savina Matricia’s hands falter over the mage’s spell she’d been weaving, and her eyes dart. But with a quivering lip, she melds the illusion anew. The light spreads out into tall, crumbling brick walls, archaic and moss-coated, with shattered green windows. Several buildings construct themselves, some connected by overground hallways, others freestanding. It almost looks like a campus for a large school, until I notice the religious iconography. It’s some sort of convent, old, of bridged cathedrals and peaked roofs. The illusion expands to create simulacrum cavern walls, a rocky interior, casing and shelling the ruin.

An underground church, perhaps in the underburrows? There can’t be too many of those.

We had a rough direction from our brief time with the tracker, and now we have a description. I’m not entirely convinced that that’s enough, but I doubt we’ll receive anything more from this child.

But when I move to say something, violent hunger rips my thought from me, replaced only with a yearning to tear the blood from the mother’s throat.

In a sudden jerk, I pull myself away, a harsh grasp of the leash on my starvation. Unbridled disgust nearly causes me to collapse, and I need to be away from here. Without warning or explanation, I start to walk, grabbing the sides of my head in self-loathing.

I make it about halfway across the promenade before I even start to let myself think. Gripping the locks of a new haircut I don’t deserve, just a monster with terrible instincts and impulses, a ticking timebomb waiting to explode—

“Hey…”, Alabastra says behind me. In the steps I’d made, I thought I’d have more distance by now, yet she’s close enough to touch. In fact, she does. A hand on my shoulder. Gods, she’s far too quick. In every sense of the word. “You alright?”

My head shakes. Nothing about me feels alright. “I… shouldn’t be… around anyone right now”, I force with a clenched jaw.

She maneuvers to face me. Her other hand taps her temple. “Those thoughts gettin’ to ya?”

It’s still bizarre that anyone knows about these urges. Alabastra especially. I’d hoped, once she informed me, that these symptoms would at least be shared, but none of the other afflicted were so affected. The simplest explanation is also the most frightening, yet it may very well be the correct one—perhaps I’ve just always been this way. Maybe they were just ignorable before. Bearable. A quiet whisper instead of the loud demands they are now. Night and day. But they were there all along, waiting for their turn to force me to violence and cruelty. I can’t say for sure. Everything before this past month tends to meld into a haze.

Her hand drops to my other shoulder, and she knows hold me like she’s poised to start shaking. “Hey! It’s alright. Moods, stay with us, please.” Then she looks like she just swallowed ash, for some reason, and changes course. “They don’t… they don’t mean nothin’, alright. It’s like I said. Just lies.”

“Are you so sure?” Even for me, my voice sounds haunted. Hollow. “Sometimes I can’t tell where they start and I stop.” Though it’s almost painful, I meet her gaze. I need that grounding. “What if that is the real me? And everything else is the lie.”

Alabastra bites her tongue. She considers a long while. Longer than I’d have expected. On a normal day this is where she’d insert some insufferable joke, but she is truly thinking through her response, like it’s life or death. “Do you… want them to be?”

“No!” I protest so quickly.

Yet, it would make things easier, if I was simply an unrepentant monster. Then at least I would be irredeemable for ontological reasons, instead of practical ones. That those thoughts aren’t all that’s within me only gives me hope that they won’t eventually burn out the rest.

Only makes me wish that if they were always destined to, that they would at least get it over with already.

I say, “But, sometimes they… drive me to take pleasure in suffering. They terrify me, Alabastra. They creep upon me out of nowhere and cause me to think things that make me want to throw up. Urge me to commit terrible deeds.”

“But you don’t. It’s what you do that matters, Moods. That’s the part you gotta hold on to. Whatever it feels like they can make you do, they can’t.” It’s almost rich, coming from someone so impulsive, but that’s not exactly the same thing. She adds, “And, hey, if you think your thoughts matter that much, then why not try and listen to the ones you actually like?”

Because I’m not sure if I could pick what I ‘like’ out of a lineup, for one. “That is incredibly easy for you to say.”

The rogue sighs, and I hate seeing her look so unworthy. Like she’s inadequate. “I know! I know. Fuck.” Her hands stick in her coat pockets. “Rana Horowitz, I am not.”

Horowitz. That’s that researcher and lecturer that had been expelled from the Lazuli Institute, the one that Alabastra would talk about sometimes, and that- that she wanted to see. “That professor of philosophy?”

Alabastra nods. “A shrink, too. Oh, she’d have a field day with you.” Then she winces at her own comment. “I… shit I didn’t mean that in, like, a bad way, mind. Just, y’know. Fuck. Sorry.”

Again with the apologies. We’re getting dangerously close to reveling in hypocrisy. Regardless of how she admonishes herself, her company alone has been enough of a distraction from the urges. As she ever was. Only now, her propensity for disruption is a boon. I don’t feel like crawling out of my own skin anymore. Well, other than the normal, baseline amount, anyways.

I say to the thief, “It’s okay. In fact, I’m actually… feeling better.”

She grins, then tilts her head past me. “Well, good. Right on time.”

Behind me, I hear the telltale clatter of Tegan’s armor approaching, and spin to see our other two returning, having finished up with the dwarven family.

Faylie is practically skipping. She says with a breathy laugh, “Whew. That was… kinda intense!” She wipes under her eye, banishing the mist gathering below. She’s all smiles again, back to her usual self; and I couldn’t be gladder for it.

It’s wrong seeing her so glum. And, if I allow myself a selfish thought, I think I need her sunny, day-to-day optimism, perhaps even more than Alabastra’s long-term idealism, at the moment.

Alabastra wants me to imagine a future. I’m trying. It’s like that future is staring back, daring me to make a move. and I’ve just never been very daring. It is still far more likely that I’ll turn craven once more, or encounter another temptation for my worst impulses. I desperately hope that I don’t—that instead I find some way to take that hand she’s offered.

But it’s all a moot point if I can’t survive today. The faun is a better help with that endeavor; I need that as a building block if I’m to even start. And now she’s back to her sunshine-y self. Better for all of us, I imagine, looking at her girlfriends’ likewise lifted spirits. Faylie is more load-bearing to this operation than the worst version of myself would have given her credit for.

“Did good, Bug”, says Alabastra.

“I’m glad! I think they needed that.” She glances wistfully back at the home, the door closing behind the Matricias. “And looks like we’re headin’ back underground! Though, I guess we haven’t actually left yet! Haha.” Underground, or rooftops; why couldn’t our grand conflict just take place at street-level?

The rogue nods, and gestures that we move on. “Last stop, sounds like. Er. Not to sound ominous.”

And I cannot help myself. “Are you so certain? That it’s where we’re going next, I mean. Sure, we know what we’re looking for, and vaguely where, but the underburrows are purportedly massive. We could spend hours wandering the caverns and not find it, and that’s if we don’t stumble upon a wrong entrance and get caught, or they find us first, or something else finds us—”

“Okay, okay! We get it, doomsayer!”

A scoff curdles my throat. “I’m not doomsaying, Alabastra, I am just being pragmatic.” No, stop. I’m getting frustrated again. I take a deep breath, and start again. “All I’m saying is that it would do to be more prepared than that. We could visit an archive. There would be maps of the underburrows—information on this ruin we’re looking for. We don’t have to rush into this lost and confused.”

And to my surprise, the faun concurs, “Auntie did say we should be prepped for anything! She wouldn’t give that kinda warning unless we really might, um…” She draws a sheepish finger across her neck.

The rogue’s lips are pulled into a tight line, before she breaks into a laugh. “Ah, Gods dammit.” She looks to me. “I wanted you in for exactly this, and now I’m annoyed it’s working. Typical.” She sounds like she’s angry at herself, mostly.

I would know. Ugh. I hate that she keeps being right that we’re alike. “You’re perturbed at your own foresight?” How had she phrased it before? That I ‘keep her from the edge of the cliff’? This would have been a particularly long plummet, and she almost sauntered right off.

“I’m perturbed that past-me is more right than present-me.” She twists her arms and scoffs, playfully. “I mean, what’d she know, anyways?”

“Objectively… less than you?”

Alabastra flashes a toothy smile. “You overestimate my memory.” Then she shrugs off the rest of the weight she been carrying. “Okay. We do things your way, then. To the library we go! Slow n’ steady… and buried in a book.”

I roll my eyes. “I thought you liked to read.”

“Yeah, fiction, Moodie. History at a stretch. My eyes glaze over if I look at anything with numbers or diagrams too long.”

“Is this not history, Miss History Major?”

She reaches for me like she’s going to pinch my ear, and I pull away at the last second. “You are bein’ a little shit right now.” Then she stares for a moment, her smile widening. And she wags one finger toward me. “Keep… keep goin’.”

Incorrigible.

Tegan speaks up. “Uh. Before we leave, isn’t there one more person we have to talk to?” She points past my shoulder, and I follow the trail back to a familiar dwarf in white robes, waiting patiently by the exit to Stilton, chatting with the beggars.

Ah. I don’t suppose I might just skip that.

Oh, right. No watch. Hah.

* * *

Father Kansis looks just as he was last. Already a positive sign, that he doesn’t harbor a sickened expression at my approach. It would be all too easy to imagine him holding up his nose and declaring me a sinner in need of a baptism by fire. Another one, in any case.

I already knew he wouldn’t, of course. Alabastra said he was the reason they got here in time. But knowing doesn’t calm the lizard-brained part of myself that urges me to run.

I’ve always been waiting for the other shoe to drop, when it came to Kansis. A cleric and an undead creature; a house of cards still waiting to fall. Better that I saw him less and less after the Bromleys passed; if my curse of ill luck hadn’t eventually struck him, and it would, then eventually my own paranoia would have driven a wedge between us anyways.

He shouldn’t know. Know that the boy he knew from adolescence, the adopted son of an old friend, the troubled kid on Mayflower Street isn’t just unsettling. That he’s a monster—a bloodsucking, selfish, violent monster. Perhaps he can glean that that’s not even the totality of it—that he’s a thief, too. A manipulator, a disgusting, writhing thing who nearly got the only other people who give a single damn about him killed, who isn’t even sure he wants to be a boy at all anymore, and—

And that’s the first time I’ve fully acknowledged that to myself in so many words, I realize. A virus… I’ll be in need of antibiotics soon, before I catch a fever, start talking like Alabastra, or Lainey.

As if that would even be so bad.

I’m a mess. Grotesque, really. And I must look every bit the loon to Kansis now as I did the first day back in the city after my adoption. Yet he’s all rosy cheeks, sunny as the God he worships. He says, “Ah, and there ya are, Oscar—”

I flinch. Noticeably enough that he stops talking. Alabastra butts in, “Not that name today, Father.”

“Just…”, I begin. I’m not exactly going to ask the local cleric to call me ‘Moodie’, am I? “Just the last name, please. I’m just ‘Bromley’, at the moment. I will, in fact, likely not return to that forename at all.” Whoever I end up as after all of this, I am certain of that, at least. The ‘O Name’ can be left burnt in that fire they lit last night, for all I care. Quite literally anything else is preferable.

His head tilts, brows furrowed, and looks at me in that way that someone who has never had to tear a part of themself out does. He doesn’t get it. Not the way Alabastra gets it, or even Tegan and Faylie do. Even Mother did, to some extent.

But though he doesn’t understand, he’s a soft-hearted enough man to put his curiosity aside. “Very well, Bromley?” He pauses, as if expecting me to renege. Instead I nod, and he says, “Well, to start, I’d like to apologize for what occurred with the monster slayer. The lad came to me with information about the vampire in The Reds. I connected th’ dots a little too verbally. It seems it had rather disastrous consequences.”

At least it seems he didn’t do it on purpose. After my myriad mistakes, I can hardly fault anyone else’s. “I understand. Your apology is, ah. Appreciated.” As it turns out, I’m not any better at receiving them than giving them. Go figure.

“I’ll, admit—while I certainly didn’t expect all of this, looking back, I- well, there were signs, weren’t there Bromley. I mean, I’m not sure how I didn’t notice th’ fangs, before!”

Thank the Gods he doesn’t reveal that he already knew. Otherwise, that might have actually been the final straw. “I’m sorry I never told you, Father.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, lad, I don’t blame ya. We worship th’ sun, for pity’s sake!”

I grip my shoulders. “I am responsible for worse than what you saw here last night. Might have seen. I don’t actually know if you were here for that?”

He nods pityingly. I almost wish he left it ambiguous. “Alabastra explained everything.” I assume ‘everything’ doesn’t actually include everything; at least, I have to assume so, for my sanity. “Os— Bromley. You’re not responsible for actions taken outside of your control.”

“I certainly feel responsible”, I say. Chapel or no, I feel a need for confession. “And despite how she acts, Alabastra does not actually know everything.”

“Hey!”, an indignant blonde yells behind me.

My eyes roll. I lead the good Father away for this, out of earshot of the thieves. I’ll tell them the entirety eventually, but it’s still too much at the moment. When it comes to Delia, Kansis deserves the truth first.

Shaking slightly, I say, “I, um. I… bit my mother, once. When I was young, and hungry, and… Sometimes I feel as if that makes me responsible for her death.”

Sorrow sinks through Kansis, tip to toe. “Oh, Bromley, no… Child—of course you weren’t responsible.” He breathes once through his bulbous dwarven nose. “What happened to Delia was a long time comin’. She survived longer than most with her condition—I saw it all over th’ battlefields. She was tougher than ten a’ those men put together, but th’ tragic truth is that with how things had gone for her, she wasn’t long for this world, anyways.”

After that, I don’t have it in me anymore to fill in the other half of the truth—that even if that was the case, which I’m unsold on, if I hadn’t lost control I’d have at least kept Father. But I don’t know how to rebuttal without another spiral, so instead I leave it there.

Kansis’s eyes swipe over the ground once, and he comes to some conclusion. “Delia told me, once, ya know—that she adopted someone so close to adulthood already on purpose. Because she knew her time was limited.”

Now that I definitely don’t know how to feel about. Assuming it’s true, and not just a half-remembered fragment of a memory, then he’s implying that Mother brought me into her life knowing it would end soon. With how much I’ve idolized her in my head, that hardly makes any sense. It almost seems cruel. Selfish. Why make someone love you only to leave them?

I can’t figure it out. It’s like a refracting prism; I twist the information this way and that and it shines a whole new light every direction. Was she a sadist all along? Did she just make a mistake? Was it a mistake? Was she right to? Did she truly get more than she bargained for, or did she, too, see through me all along? I never did have to tell her I was a vampire, after all.

I wish I could ask. Instead I’m left with the imprint of a person in the sand, to puzzle out the shape of them from the space they behind. Nothing but the impact. And, by results alone, looking at the mess I’ve become, it’s hard to say. But she was too kind a person to let such a question of her legacy be left unanswered. Maybe that’s where my responsibility comes in—to make her choice the right one. What had Kansis said in that graveyard, the other day? To honor her, I should live well?

It feels more true now than it did before.

And Kansis—it is bizarre that he is so accepting. “Do you truly believe I should be so easily forgiven, Father?”

Then he does something I don’t know I’ve seen him do before. He cracks a joke. “Well, I’d be out of a job if I didn’t!”

It gets a bitter little laugh out of me.

We walk back to the thieves, and he addresses them, “I’m afraid th’ bounty’s off, you three.”

Well that’s one question answered. I stiffen up at that revelation. I no longer want to imagine a world in which Alabastra did strike me down that day, in my office. The image of them taking my body back to the good Father flashes through my head. It never was just me I was hurting with my insistence on self-destruction, was it?

Alabastra practically drapes herself over my shoulder. “Even if it wasn’t, Kansis—I wouldn’t take that bounty for every dollar in Ruem.”

The cleric gives a side-smile to her, and says, “No. I don’t imagine ya would.” There’s a sentimentality to him, always present but now turned to full-burn, as his focus returns to me. “Bromley. I get th’ feelin’ you lot are in a bit of a rush, but I’d just like to ask ya one more thing before I letcha go.”

“I suppose?”, I respond.

“Do ya think you’ll be happy?”

That’s almost a laughably simple question to answer. “No.”

Yet.

Yet the truth doesn’t quite sound so truthful as it leaves my lips. I don’t think I will be; objectively I am not, and in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever been. But that two-letter words doesn’t seem to do justice to the totality of it anymore. Because there’s something to it now that there wasn’t before. As far as I can remember, and certainly heightened a week ago, I’d thought it a fleeting star, too far-off to grasp, to conceive of. Pointless to try. In a different world entirely, the length of the cosmos between. I wouldn’t have even thought to ask myself the question. Such a myopic and self-aggrandizing thing to be concerned with—happiness.

But self-pity has made me no less inward. No less selfish, no less a navel-gazing narcissist. At least if I were content, I’d be all those things without the suffering. The abject misery, the dogged commitment to solipsism. I suppose that’s the crux, then. The wrinkle. I don’t think I will ever be happy. But…

“But I think I at least see why someone would try to be.”

Father Kansis reaches up and pats me on the arm. “It’s a start.” And he says to Alabastra, “And Ms. Camin, should ya still need it, you’re of course welcome back at th’ temple to stay another night.”

“Thanks, Father”, she says, and turns, motioning us to follow. And once we’ve made enough distance she says under her breath, only barely audible to the three of us, “Let’s hope we make it that far.”

* * *

The running waters through the Grennard sewers still smell absolutely foul. By all indications we’ll be returning to the underburrows soon, perhaps as soon as later today, but for now I’ll be more than glad to get some air away from them.

As we trudge through now-familiar brick tunnels, Faylie clops up beside me. I’m not sure how she gets herself to be so stealthy, with those click-clacky cloven feet, but she manages it. When she wants to, anyways. “Sooo…”, she begins. I assume she’s looking up at me, but I don’t risk taking my eyes away from where I’m headed in this place. The last thing I need is to have to learn to swim in a sewer. “Whatcha get up to while we were apart?”

Part of me almost enjoys that we’re taking the catching-up so slowly. Letting me rectify the mistakes of the past few days piece-by-piece. “Nothing of note, really. Cleaned up a little around the shop—got a new window ordered—dreaded over my financial future.”

Alabastra delivers a, “Ditto on that last point!”, over her shoulder. The she waves a hand through the air. “Offer still stands, by the way. Say the word, we’re on your place, anytime.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

Her gait slows just a touch. “No, I… I guess you wouldn’t.” Then she picks up her feet again.

And, I am starting to pick up a social grace or two. Here and there. Not that I intend on employing them often. “And what about you?”

She coughs into her hand, abashed at something. “Well, Phryday after you left we had our own little tiff. Nothin’ so volatile as our screaming match, but—”

Tegan finishes her thought. “Not pretty, either. I was, uh. Not happy.” She turns around to say, “Think I told— uh, um.” And back again to face her front upon meeting my eyeline, her new tail wagging harder. What has gotten into her?

Alabastra chuckles at her lover, and continues, “Then we went house-huntin’ a bit. Didn’t find anything, obviously.” She snaps once, finger bouncing in recognition. “There was one place, but it turns out I knew the guy we’d be rentin’ from—a fuckin’ Syndicate slumlord. That would not have ended well.

“Other than that, did a lil’ snoopin’ around for any more leads on our monster crisis. Only little tidbit we got was that there were Sable Guard spotted in the cliff downs. Guess we know why, now. Or, maybe, anyways. Timeline doesn’t add up.” Alabastra starts to swirl her hand in erratic motions, clearly having caught herself in some mental track. “If the cops didn’t have a lead on Nate-y, that woulda been our last resort. Try n’ luck out, find a Sable and tail ’em.”

With a far-too cheery uptick, Faylie says, “We would’ve had to do a stakeout or something! Though, that probably wouldn’t have gone super great with you being all Woodie.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Woo-die?”

“Yeah! Y’know, when you were all mean and stuck and hated being around us! Watch-Moodie!”

Ahead of us, Alabastra ribs Tegan in the side and murmurs in her ear so quiet I only barely catch, “Someone’s been ‘watching’ Moodie.” Tegan buries her face in her hands. I don’t get it. Is the knight watching me for signs of turning?

Of course I don’t ask, and not just because I likely only heard that thanks to my heightened senses. Technically eavesdropping. Probably irrelevant, anyways. I say to Faylie, exasperated, “You can’t just keep naming versions of me. Especially if they’re going to keep being so ridiculous.”

We round a corner, and a familiar ladder back up to the surface greets us. Alabastra steps up, climbing several of the metal rungs, and reaches up to displace the metal cover in the ceiling.

Tegan says, “Woodie is especially bad, Faylie. Like, throw it in the trash bad.”

Alabastra quips through grunts of effort, “Regardless, glad we didn’t have to stakeout. I sit in one place too long, I get stir-crazy.” The cover slides across ground above us with a dull bell-like clamor. Sunlight streams into the sewer in a perfect column.

I step forward to the ladder. “Well, that hardly surprises me, with your—”

FUCK!

The second my hand reaches for the ladder, I pull it away in a shock, breathing heavy and heart pounding in my chest.

Because the sunlight fucking burns.

Hey is that bad for an herbalist?

We've seen our vampire make some significant strides, but is this cause for retreat, or another stepping stone? Hopefully we can put a little faith in them.

Thanks for reading. < 3

Next update is (1-39) marigold; on Wednesday, October 23rd.