Content Warnings

Transphobia
Malicious deadnaming
Fascist violence
Religious fundamentalism
Allusions to conversion therapy
Blood, violence, death

My hand draws closer.

And closer…

In the glass surface of The Timekeeper, without my reflection to block, the room behind me is mirrored. I see the Sable Guard, at attention, antsy. I see Lyla Serrone, paranoid, intent. I see Faylie Nevis. Hands clasped, yet with a scheming look in her eye, the faun who has shown me nothing but kindness offers it again in full. And I see Alabastra Camin. Fists balled at her sides, she looks more worried now than ever, and it’s enough to give me pause. But then, she does the most expected and unexpected thing she could do.

She smiles.

And then my hand wraps beneath the writing desk, and in one swift motion, I throw it off its feet, upturning the whole thing and sending The Timekeeper spilling toward a hole in the wall. As it moves into a fall, Lyla screams behind me, but the sound slows to a stop. The watch is held in place, arresting time around it, the storm outside, everything, everyone.

Everyone but me.

And with a tick-tick-tick, it pulls me inside.

I need a conversation.

* * *

In that white void expanse of The Timekeeper’s interior metaphorical world, I sit up upon that unreal material and shout, “Hey!”

Hey!—Hey!—Hey!, my angry echo yells back.

I stand, circling in a pivot over and over until my former tormentor shows herself. Lines under the surface of the nonworld start to stretch, not from nowhere, but underneath me. Tendrils of wire material writhing like an urchin exploring uncharted waters beneath my feet. I start walking, breathing hard, wide-eyed as I search the blinding de-void.

When I was here last, I was terrified. Now I’m just annoyed. “Do you hear me? Come out!”

“Enough yelling!”, says a familiar voice behind me.

The Timekeeper wears the same skin she had before, of the young teenaged girl from a darker age. Her expression is stern and tense, watching me like I’m some belligerent drunk family member, complete with a dash of worry. She still wants something from me.

I straighten my back. Despite appearances, this is not some little girl. She’s ancient, and more powerful than anyone I’ll ever know. I won’t treat her any less than that. “I’m here to talk.”

She crosses her arm, tapping her foot. With each tap a procession of rings sound around us, as if she’s jangling a bag of coins. “You threw me away.” Her head turns, nose stuck up, and her eyes close. “Why should I tell you anything?”

Precision is deathly necessary here. I don’t know how much she can tell of my intent. Better to get what I need in a roundabout way than not at all. “You were willing to explain the situation to me before, when I began to falter. Perhaps some amount of clarity may yet bring me back.”

One eye peaks open. An unnecessary flourish—this boundless realm is herself entire. This avatar is just for my benefit. But she says through her false lips, “Fine. I knew you’d crawl back anyways. What do you need to know before you’re satisfied with our deal again, Oscar Bromley?”

That name has made me bristle for over a decade, but now that I know that it’s not mine, that’s an added, cruel sort of satire to it. Like she’s mocking me, and spitefully so, too. She has to know my feelings on it—she drove me to shear myself. She avoided Alabastra’s name. It makes a sick sort of sense—an entity opposed to change would be terrified most of all of a change so freeing. So antithetical to her principles of safety, of ruinous self-hatred, of pain and coercion. When this is over I’ll have to inform Alabastra of how deeply we unsettle an ancient artifact with our simple existence. It’s almost funny.

But for now I brush off the discomfort and say, “I want to know about this storm.”

“Oh, you mean Lyla Serrone’s False-Runeplague? Why would that have anything to do with me?”

“Well you must know something abou—” And I stop. “Wait… what did you just say?”

As if she didn’t just reveal a major piece of information to me as nonchalant as discussing the weather, she adds, “That Gods-Blessed woman kept trying to wield me to discover the ‘source’ of the storm she made! Bizarre individual.” Before I can ask any further about that, she says, “I wouldn’t let her wield me to catch a taxi cart! I won’t settle for anything less than the best. A true champion, wanting for nothing!” And she’s looking right at me.

I’ve made her realize that she doesn’t want a champion unless they share her devotion to abject, solipsistic nihilism? I’m almost flattered. “But that sounds like you’ve changed, doesn’t it?”

“No!”, she protests, petulantly. “I’ve just realized my standards!”

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it is. The all-powerful timebending artifact—trapped, too, by her own self-deceit. A hypocrite like anyone else, unable to accept that she’s wrong. Convinced by, and drunk on, her own power, thinking her biases are fact. Swallowing down that pride—a cure for fear, worse than the disease.

Best I don’t poke that bear, of course. “And how does it work, exactly?”

She shrugs. “Psychic storm—psychic effects. Easy. I mean, trust me—I know her type. Surround a sorcerer with that much mental feedback, you bet you’re gonna get some psionic disasters.”

 That raises a whole other set of questions, that she doesn’t seem like she’d be keen to answer. “And what would happen if you interacted with it?”

And then a twinkly look dances in her eye. “Well… I guess the same thing that happened to you! I could lock everyone in place! Maybe even shed this outer shell—merge with it!” And she smiles. “That is, unless you’d want to join up, still?”

Not a fan of either of these prospects. It seems clear, then. Keep the artifact out of the storm, and away from me while we’re at it. Doing fantastic at the second part of that plan, so far. I look her in the eye. That’s everything I needed, and more. “I don’t ever want to be that person again.”

The Timekeeper rolls her eyes. “Then you don’t have to be! We can take you as you are now. I can tell you’re not as miserable as you were. Would it really be so bad to be like this forever?”

“Yes”, I say. Without hesitation. “Even I were stuck in a pleasant moment, I’d still be stuck. I want to change.” I take a deep breath, and the air feels sharper. “You’d just kill me again.”

“Weren’t you already dead?”

I can’t pretend that doesn’t sting. As it turns out, she doesn’t need headaches to inflict pain.

Around us, those strands of wire-like light begin to spool out across the white expanse once more. They shift and meld into color and shape and sound, and I’m greeted with the sight of the scene I left behind. The Sable Guard, Lyla Serrone, and Faylie and Alabastra, staring on in concern, slowly shifting to cheering. In this frozen moment, I’m able to appreciate the look in their eyes. Utter joy at their complete trust paying off. I didn’t disappoint.

The Timekeeper looks around at the scene she’s crafted, and says, sickly sweet, “If you won’t do it for us, then maybe you’ll do it for them.”

My heart seizes.

“What do you think happens when this moment ends?”

Before I can answer, the scene speeds up again. Lyla Serrone turns in a fury, issues an order to her guard. And without warning or remorse, they run the two women who mean the world to me through with quick jabs of their spears. They’re dead before they hit the ground. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

“But it doesn’t have to be that way. Claim me, and Lyla will have no reason to kill them. You can still become a vital part of her operation, and spare their lives in the bargain. We can save them. Together.” And she’s sticking her hand out, as the scene plays out behind her over and over again.

I stare. If this were anywhere else I’d fear for wasting time to think—the one upside.

Lyla would have no reason to immediately issue a kill order, without first knowing why what happened, happened. But that’s assuming she’s a rational actor, and I’m not sure I can count on that anymore. If I think through the nature of the artifact, of what I’ve gleaned of time, from Antitia Robeno, this doesn’t have to be the future. She could just be trying to trick me, or it’s a twisted interpretation, or just one of many possible futures. Perhaps it couldn’t possibly occur now that I’ve seen it.

But that’s a conclusion of maybes and mights. I’m playing with fire that way; the lives of two of the three people that I cannot lose. I need something more solid than maybe.

I only have the one anchor. The one guiding light left in me. I’ve abandoned everything else, and I made my north star a promise. I can’t break it. I’ve broken too much in my short decades.

If this is the future, then there’s nothing to do but amend it. I’ve already made my choice. What use is temptation, when I’ve known something more profound?

It’s daring me to change.

The Timekeeper waits for my answer. This person, trapped in this place, put here by some ancient mage, endlessly circling around herself without ever having the chance for relief. Fashioning herself into a cage to trap time, and her within it. Centuries of loneliness.

It didn’t strike me until now—it seems a terrible way to be.

“You’re right, you know”, I say to The Timekeeper, “It’s horrifying. Time. Change. It’s terrible, and monstrous. I don’t blame you for hiding from it. But it can be wonderful, too. It’s blood feeding a hungry animal. A weed burgeoning through cracks in concrete. It hurts, but it’s life. There’s a world out there, that I don’t want to be just an observer towards anymore. I couldn’t. Nobody should be so isolated. Not even you.

“And so, in the future, I truly, sincerely wish for you to find the strength to contend with whatever drove you to this. Whatever thorn is stuck in you, that’s caused you to believe that this stagnation is any better. And then I hope you let it out.”

The timeless girl that represents the artifact stares at me a moment, before her face sours. She tilts her head down like a roving predator, smelling blood in the water. And the white expanse around us is broken by the presence of massive cracks of golden light in the sky. It stretches like lightning across an endless blank, and BOOMS like thunder. The microcosm universe I’ve found myself in rumbles and shakes and threatens to tear itself apart. The color tints and darkens, moving from blinding light to the stormy gray of an incensed sky.

And the illusion of the girl starts to crack, as if shattered ceramic. She walk forward, and with each step a piece of her human visage falls away into the abyss, melding with the strands behind her. Her shoulder, her left foot, the side of her face. And revealed beneath is an automaton, a construct of blue platinum burnished to a shine. She has no face. Just an empty mask, blank and featureless as the inside of this place. She gains height as she goes, until she’s ten-feet of metal, in the shape of a woman, golden etchings in intricate patterns around the edges of the hard exterior.

She speaks, and when she does her voice is still hers, but more mature. Showing her endless years. Booming and echoing and metallic, and rung from every uncorner of this nonspace. “Did you believe that keeping you stuck in a moment was the worst I could inflict upon you? That the most pain you might feel was a migraine? I could do so much worse. I could age you—50 years, gone in the blink of an eye. I could reverse your perspective of time—cause you to relive every horrible moment of your existence widdershins. I could send you past your own death and remove you from time entirely!” She sounds manic, unhinged, and deeply spiteful. And she starts to laugh. “But… no! No! NO, I think there is worse I can do, yet. I can see into your future”—golden light shines in a ring under her mask—”And you, you, YOU, you! The worst thing I can do to you, is force you to live through what comes next.

“You will know pain unlike anything you thought you could feel. You will fail. You will know loss that will break you. The world itself will war against the abomination you will become, and you will know you only have yourself to blame, for not sparing yourself that heartache when you had the chance!” And her laughing fits crack the sky in two, inky darkness spilling into the world. “So go! Enjoy the doomed world you have created for yourself, Oscar Bromley!”

And despite everything, I feel not a shred of fear. I look up at her metal visage and say, “You want to know how I know you’re bluffing?” She stops laughing. “Oscar Bromley never had a future.”

Light shines from her. She raises a hand.

I’m thrown off my feet—

* * *

—and stumble backwards across the brick.

Tumbling end-over-end, I barely catch fleeting sights of the watch disappearing beyond a crack in the wall. And then my legs fall through an opening in the floor, threatening to pull me down to the cavern below. My arms scrape over the brickwork as I pull myself up against the hole’s edge, scrambling to hang on.

Alabastra and Faylie rush forward. The guard try to grab them, and for a split-second I’m horrified that the future she showed will come to pass, but they maneuver under their grips with deft precision. A lie. Of course. They reach me, and pull me back into the hallway, safe from falling to my death.

Once I’m hoisted back to my feet, Lyla Serrone approaches, furious beyond measure. “What was that?”, she asks. The guards behind her tighten their grips on their weapons, but don’t make any further aggressive action. They’re waiting for her signal—and clearly just as confused as her, if not more so.

Hands still on my knees, somewhat delirious from this latest pass with the artifact, it all hits me at once. And I start to laugh. “It was you…”, I say, letting the sheer disbelief of such a statement strike them all. “You created the storm. The urges.” And though I don’t say it, I give Alabastra a nod. She was right about that, at least.

Lyla Serrone takes a half-step back. “What are you talking about?” And there’s not a shred of irony or accusation-wrought panic in her voice; she’s genuinely baffled. At least, as far as I can tell.

Despite the artifact’s information, now I’m second-guessing myself. Because she should be baffled. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing about anything we’ve encountered has disproved my suspicion; that despite their terrible means, and terrible ends, Lyla Serrone and the Lupine loyalists following her here wanted to stop this storm, and the urges it conjures. Everything about her demeanor, her wants, her goals, and especially her fears indicated nothing less. She dreaded this exact circumstance. She lived through the plague wars. She spent years horrified of me, specifically, because of a single foul encounter in my childhood.

What kind of person would conjure their own worst nightmare?

Then it hits me.

The kind of person with too much time on their hands, desperate to be right, needing an enemy. The kind of person with power, looking for a reason to wield it. The kind of person full of pride and ego, fed from a lifetime of people telling them they’re the exception to the rules. She lived in horror of a hungry child, and needed that to mean something. She was handed down a destiny from the Dozen-Minus-One, and spent every day since searching for it.

‘Worst nightmare‘? She got everything she wanted.

“You didn’t do it on purpose. It was an accident. You and your… paranoia, your conspiracies… your fears. You needed there to be a threat to justify your hate—so bad that, subconsciously, you created one. Nobody else can follow the logic because it only makes sense to you.”

Lyla hunches forward. “That’s a lie. You’re speaking with the conspirators’ tongues—”

“What conspirators?! You haven’t met a single one! You were so comfortable imagining some shadowy plot, but it became impossible to apply it to any real person you actually met. You were only ever chasing the victims of your own paranoia.” And I remember Faylie’s words. “You imagined a world full of monsters… and your magic made it so.”

Alabastra says, mostly to herself, “Like a self-fulfilling prophecy…”

As an aside, I add, “Well— all prophecies are self-fulfilling.” I look to the faun.

Faylie smiles a mile wide. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be prophecies!” And she turns to Lyla. “Gee, lady, don’t you know anything?!”

Lyla Serrone says nothing for a moment, pain and rage making an ever-more solid mask of her face, lines running deeper and deeper. “You’re— you’re lying.” And though she’s accusing us, it’s obvious what her words are really for—throwing hard truths away. I played that trick on myself again and again. The final resort of someone so stuck—if you can’t make it fit, discard it.

The rogue wisecracks, “Wanna bet?”

“The— the watch! What did you do to the watch?!” And just like that, she no longer has to think. She’s come too far.

I say, delusionally gleeful now, “That’s the best part—none of you can use it anyways! I’ve ruined it! It only wants a wielder without ambitions or hopes, someone so without a future it can keep them as trapped as it is forever.” And I lean into our leader. “It’s simply ironic. It would likely agree with your end goals, your aims, but you’re all too full of ambition to claim it! Your own drive to wind back the clock is exactly why you can’t!” And again I start to laugh.

From a certain angle, it’s disgustingly funny. All of this amounted to absolutely nothing. She can’t even pretend to solve the problem she caused.

The Blessed turns from disgust… to an icy neutral. “I see.” And she turns to her guard. “In that case—please retrieve Nathaniel Latchet, and bestow him the artifact.”

Ah. That… that would suffice, yes.

She looks to us. Her hand lights with golden magic. “And kill them.”

Truce over.

Alabastra’s arm wrap around Faylie and I. “Time to go!” And she pulls us off the side of the building.

“PLUMA“, shouts Faylie, arresting our fall. Above us, a beam of golden light narrowly misses the tops of our heads.

With a swing against the stonework, Alabastra kicks and crashes through a window the next story down, pulling us inside. We tumble and spill across the hall. She stands with a roll. “What’d ya learn?”, she shouts to me.

“We can’t let the watch end up inside the storm”, I inform as we run some random direction. “It might spell disaster.”

She nods, giving a quick glance behind her. “Got it! Then the plan is, we play keep-away! Find the doohickey, keep it from the magic stuff— and Nathaniel— and probably you. Plus find our stuff and grab Tegan.”

“Plan? That’s scarcely more than a checklist!”

“You are such a fussbudget—”

We’re interrupted by the beating of wings. Through the multi-windowed hallway we run through, I catch the holy vestments of a very pissed-off Lyla Serrone, as light starts to spill through the windows. And shatters the glass. We duck low from the spraying shards as a spell burns its way through the hall, and move to the walls where the light doesn’t spill out. I’m not eager to find out what that spell will do to me with my newfound allergy to the sun.

I look around the ground, and pick up a piece of blasted away brickwork. “Right size?”, I say to Faylie, holding the craggily stone in the palm of my hand.

She lights up. “Good thinking!” Her card shines over it. “VERTO!”

To my other side I hand Alabastra the ‘Timekeeper’. She winds back, waits for a lull in the woman’s spell-slinging, and throws it out the window. “It’s yours!”, she yells.

The woman dives after the illusion, giving us enough leeway to get out of the windowed section of this building. We sprint into an interior hall.

“That isn’t likely to fool her long!”, I remark.

“Long enough!”, Alabastra snarks back.

We run down the hall, heading toward what I think is the main building. Ahead of us, clamoring armor heralds harsh voices. “It’s this direction! Come on, men!”, shouts a gruff voice.

“Shit!”, says Alabastra, “In here!” She barges into the nearby room, ushering us inside right before whoever’s coming can spot us. We hear marching the other side of the door, disappearing the way we came from.

As we’re about to believe ourselves safe, I take a look around the room. It seems to be a small break room, with a few boxes full of rations cracked open, a rickety-looking countertop forming a makeshift kitchen, a table with a set of cards still splayed across it, and mostly-empty chairs surrounding said table.

Mostly.

The lone guard stares wide-eyed at us, apparently too stunned to make a move. Which works out well for Alabastra, as she springs forward, grabs a knife with a piece of ham still stuck through it off the countertop and points it under the guard’s throat. “Make a sound and I gut ‘cha.”

He nods, cooperative as can be. There’s something familiar about his stare… and his idiot naivete. If my memory serves me, and it’s the one thing that has lately, I think he’s the guard Tegan incapacitated, in Serrone’s manor.

“Where’s our stuff stored?”, says our leader.

“…”, he stares, unblinking.

Alabastra sighs. “You can… you can make a sound now.”

“Left down the hall, two stories lower, in the room next to the stairs, please don’t hurt me”, the guard says, rapidly, with accompanied gestures. His accent isn’t Anillian. I think he’s Stottinian.

She holds the knife a moment longer, then relaxes, and turns back to us. “Y’know, this is doing very bad things to my perception of brain trauma-based rehabilitation.”

The guard shakes his head. “You really are the thieves from the manor? They told me all about you after they woke me up.” And he swallows down some amount of pride and fear in equal measure. “I-I didn’t sign up with the Sable Guard to work with Partisans. To hurt people like they’re hurting people down there. It’s not right, is it?”

He does sound rather young. I’d assume he thought as it would be reasonable to think—that a posting in the safest part of the country would scarcely involve any actual fighting. And certainly not the cruelty on display here.

With a pat on his shoulder, Alabastra says, “Quit your job, kid. It was never peachy.”

“I… oh, good Gods, I think I’m going to have to, yeah.” He relaxes, and takes his helmet off, pulling at his hair as he comes to grips with his decision.

We duck back out of the break room, heading for the stairs. Though there’s shouting all through the building around us, we don’t run into anyone else until we arrive at our target room. Thrown in, haphazard, is our gear, waiting for us to find. Tegan’s, too, in an uncommon stroke of luck.

As I pull my bag back over my shoulder, I check what I have left. Not much. I’ll need to make it count. I strap the sword hilt back to my belt.

Alabastra moves to open the door again, but before she does, Faylie holds up a hand. “Wait!” She holds The Moon between her fingers, twists it once, and casts, “NOVUS PERSONA.”

We run down the hall until we come to an intersection. One group of black-armored guard from deeper in the building arrives and meets another.

The leader of one group yells out, “Hey! Where are you going?”

At the head of the other group, the other leader holds a familiar brass pocketwatch in his hand. “We found this hanging off the side of the building. We need to return it to the Gods-Blessed as soon as possible.”

The first leader nods with a pinched chin. “Right, right. We’ll take it to her—we know where she is. You go investigate the dorms, we heard a few of our own haven’t come back from patrols.”

“Very well.” He tosses the watch to the first leader.

Alabastra catches it in her disguised gauntlet. “Thanks!”, she says, still lowering her voice. And the other group departs down the other direction.

I wipe my brow, and we keep moving.

We arrive in what looks to be a main hall—the same one we saw the councilmen talking in, only now it’s full of Sables. Chatting in anxious anticipation, sitting on the rotting pews, they can smell the shifting tides in the air, and they’re waiting for some direction, some enemy to fight.

“Follow my lead”, Alabastra says, and walks briskly with an exaggerated jaunt to her arms and a nervous smile on her face towards the center of the room. I follow, keeping my head down and arms crossed, shuffling my feet. Faylie practically skips in her Sable Guard illusion, waving gaily to the others in the room.

Despite our wildly conspicuous tells, none of them seem to be making a move. We’re practically invisible.

Beating wings from the balcony above draws the entire crowd’s attention. Hands over the baluster, Lyla Serrone peers down. “What are you all doing, standing around? Find the—” And she stops mid-admonishment, as her eyes meet mine. Shit. She snaps her fingers, and our illusion is shattered just as we’ve made it to the other end of the room.

For a moment, the guard and us stare at each other, completely unsure how to proceed.

“After them?!“, Lyla orders.

We turn and run with a crowd of guard behind us.

I am… not fast enough for this. Ahead of us, I spot a small alcove in the wall. “Slow down, I have an idea!”

Right before we reach the curved inside, where a God’s monument must have once stood, I throw a smoke bomb at our feet. The three of us pack into the tiny dent in the wall like sardines.

“VERTO“, Faylie whisper-casts another illusion, of three figures running out of the other side of the cloud of fog. A dozen guards sprint past us, whipping through the mist as they run, shouting demands and throwing spears at our illusory selves.

I sigh, careful not to break the little stone statuette of Mother Nature at my feet, and say to Faylie, “What would we do without you?”

“Die horribly?” She shrugs.

We hop out of the alcove and run back into the hall, Alabastra creeping carefully around the corner to make sure Lyla is gone.

When the coast is clear, she pulls out the watch, holding it by the chain. “Maybe we stash it somewhere? Or break it?”

“Caching it is a gamble we shouldn’t risk until we’re far from here, at least”, I say. “And as for destroying it—that thing is ancient. You’re welcome to try, but I don’t think it’s going to—”

She swings it by the chain down onto the floor. It bounces once, and a burst of teal-white energy sends the rogue five feet into the air, spinning once and landing with a crash through a rotted pew.

“… work.”

“Ow.“

While she’s standing, and Faylie grabs the watch off the floor, I notice something through the windows. The long, thin stained glass of this temple flickers with light growing closer from outside, silhouetting dozens of marching figures, around all sides of this hall. One window is broken in at the top corner, and through it, I spot the many faces of the cohort of Partisans, the twisting angry faces of men convinced of their righteousness, far more ready to enact violence on us than the guard.

Alabastra rises to her feet, and notices what I notice. “Fuck. Alright, uh… we stay in this building and keep gambling on the Sables, or we head outside and deal with them. Any preference?”

Deadpan, I say, “It depends—how extrajudicial do you want your murder to be?”

“There’s that optimism, M.”

The two start to make plans for escape, but as I stare at the flickering torches being brought to surround the priory by the violent mob, something in the way it flickers off that green glass and scatters barely-perceptible against the cloudy window—it strikes a memory in my mind.

What did Antitia Robeno say? When things were ‘looking hazy‘? That’s a rather peculiar way to put it…

I try and think back to the contract. It was only a poem; it’s not exactly as if there were clauses or loopholes baked into it its stanzas, right?

Or perhaps… tribulations, alterations—vaguely describing danger, followed with specifically referring to the transformations…

Faylie says, “Umm… I just felt my illusion run out… I think they know they were tricked!”

Elucidate, fettle-fine—Nonspecific directions, fact-finding and problem solving…

Alabastra takes position behind the lectern, bow at the ready. “We’ll do what we can. M, grab cover!”

Blood, and word, and bone—being bound in blood and bone would be enough for a mortal, but why specify word?

“M!”

Unless, words are necessary to bind a fae, as well…? Strive to… Wait!

I speak aloud, letting that snaking chord around my heart ring,

“Strive to fettle-fine our plight!”

“Well, about time ya figured it out, honey”, says a voice from the ether.

Antitia Robeno apparates with a warbling sound in the air. She isn’t fully present, carrying the tell-tale translucence of the Ethereal Realm, yet when she speaks she does not disappear. More than mortal. Standing between the three of us, she carries a snarky grin, satisfied and delighted.

Faylie rockets into her side with a gasp. “Auntie?!” Her hands pass halfway through her form, only semi-constituted. “Why are you here?”

“A contract’s a contract…”, she says, looking at me, knowingly.

I answer, “And a contract works both ways. You spoke it the same as us.” ‘Our plight’. Of course, she was bound by it, too. I am, obviously irked that vague, pronoun-playing fae balderdash may be what saves us. But there is a twinge of pride at having bested one at their own nonsense game. That is assuming she didn’t want it this way all along.

That is perhaps something I could choose to divine from her smile, but it would only be a guess. “I can’t technically interfere in mortal affairs, but I always was a fan of bendin’ the rules.” And she backs away from her niece. “So make it count.” And on count, she snaps her fingers.

An arcane portal opens at her side, filled with fog and shifting light. And from it, practically spat out by the magic, a flood of well-dressed members of the Gloamwood Gang tumble into the temple. A redcap, a man with a pig’s head, a familiar werebear, two dozen or more strange fae of colorful suits, armed to the teeth with weapons and magic.

Antitia says to her newly-arrived subordinates, “You play nice now, boys.” And to the three of us, “And good huntin’, girls.”

My ears burn up.

She’s gone as quick as she came, disappearing with a popping sound, right as a rock sails through the glass of the church windows. The faewilds toughs draw swords and daggers and crossbows and staves, and look to us for direction.

Alabastra shrugs. “Uh. Fuck ’em up?”

The redcap with bloodshot eyes snarls wildly, and leads a charge back the windows without regard, itching for a fight. The rest follow behind with weapons at the ready. With the glass shattering all around us, the battlefield is laid bare, as Partisans marching with ill-intent are met with killers who cut their teeth on an otherworldly edge. The vicious little redcap spins with daggers outstretched, and blood spills across the crowd. The fae criminals sling spells of fire and wild natural energy and pure arcana, breaking upon the militia and parting them like waves crashing against rock. And before the freshly-made corpses can even grow cold, their eyes glow with a pale green energy, and they rise once more to assail their own, dancing to the werebear Forrest’s tune, as he stands upon a precipice with his arms outstretched.

I am… admittedly not as entranced by the violence when they do it. It’s just vaguely gross, really. Huh.

With the Partisans distracted and bleeding, Alabastra turns towards the hall. “C’mon. Let’s go get Tegan.”

* * *

Mossy brick walls rush past us as we sprint through the priory’s halls. The fighting outside grows loud and clamorous, as the Gloamwoods pull in more and more reinforcements of Sables to assist the less-than-lawful militia; it leaves the interior bare as we make our way swift and silent to the dorms.

As we go, I say, “Do we still intend to retreat, once we find her?”

Faylie says, “I dunno… I don’t think we’re gonna get far as long as Lyla’s still in play.”

And speak of the angel… as we pass through a hall with a view to the campus’s interior courtyard, Lyla’s voice booms out over to her subordinates, “What do you mean he’s missing?! Find the detective, you useless tin-laden wretches!”

I suppose that buys us a little extra time. Alabastra leans in, waiting for any other sign, then issues us forward in our sculking once we hear wingbeats passing above, and running over the gravel and grass.

The clamor grows louder, and louder, and suddenly, is coming straight down the hall.

“Shit“, Alabastra seethes. “If we circle back around—”

The footfalls stop all at once, and a collection of four or five Sable Guard march around the approaching corner, spears held high, nearly scraping the ceiling. They stare at us. We stare at them.

And then from the other side of the T-junction, a hulking mass sails like a bullet through the hall. In a flash of blue and white, the guard are knocked against the wall, splattered with blood, thrown off their feet, and what remains of their unit runs off in fear.

Hunched with their back to us, the beast that’s saved us twitches, and blood drips off its claws. My stomach rumbles at the sight. Thassalia Demetrix looks over her wereshark-form shoulder, an ichthyic point to her snout, familiar blood-frenzy in her eyes. Then in a shifting of bone and blubber, she transforms back into the slender and frail form of her human self, woozy and stumbling, and she catches herself on the wall.

We all rush forward, at the same time that from the direction she came, a large group comes running, with our own lycanthrope at the head.

Tegan runs and wraps the three of us in a hug. “Oh, holy shit.” She heaves a moment, then pulls away, all of us breathing heavy. Her hands, pants, and undershirt are stained with a crystalline blue powder, and she’s shaking. “Wow. You have no idea how much work I just put in.”

Alabastra wraps a hand around her lover’s neck. “Like I knew you would.”

Then the rogue starts to dart around, doing a head-count of the other afflicted—there must be a dozen or more. They all harbor such sallow faces, haunted by their time here. I look to Thassalia, rubbing her arm as she leans against the wall, looking down at the bloody mess she’s made.

When she’s done counting, Alabastra says, “Alright, quickest way to the exit is back through the courtyard, so let’s move it, people!”

With the memory of this place’s layout still firmly in her mind, she leads us around to the courtyard’s closest entrance, which eventually lets out at the other end in a wide arch to the open space of the surrounding cavern-forest. Walkways stretch between the various buildings, there are crumbling brick roofs to open-air halls, and a large and gnarled tree sits in the center. We’re almost there.

But we don’t get far.

As we start to run, the angelic wingbeats of Lyla grow loud above our heads again, as she makes a dive for our posse. She lands gracefully a few dozen feet ahead of us, fists clenched. “After all the chaos you have wrought, now you seek to deprive these people of their healing?”

Thassalia shouts back, “You’re a poison pusher! Nothing more!”

The afflicted start to join in her shouts, issuing their complaints at their treatment to the blessed woman. But she doesn’t shout back. Her eyes have located the watch in our faun’s hand. Faylie puts the watch behind her back nervously; the foolproof feint does not seem to fool the sorceress.

Even now, she can’t let go. Lyla will chase us to the ends of the world for her prize—for the proof of her rightness that she thinks it promises. “Allie”, I say under my breath, catching our leader’s attention. “We are putting these people at risk, as long as we still have what Lyla wants.”

She bites the corner of her mouth, but doesn’t argue. “She’s not gonna let these folk leave, either. You’re sure she wants the watch more?” I nod. Alabastra continues, “Then we split with ’em. Keep her distracted, while these folk get away.” Her eyes quickly dart to the other afflicted, before back to me, and she gathers a serious look on her face. “M. You can go with them if you—”

I grab her forearm. “I’m not leaving.”

A chuckles leaves her. Her voice is sick with nostalgia as she says, “Dangerously close to breakin’ your promise there, Moodie. But I’ll let it slide.”

Tegan steps forward, and puts a hand on Thassalia’s shoulder. “Hey.” Thassalia shakes herself out of her shouting match, looking back at our knight with renewed focus. “Take these people out of here, okay? Through that exit I told you about. Don’t stop for anything or anybody.”

The actress rolls her neck, but borrows some of the other lycanthrope’s determination. “Sounds like we’d better not.” She pulls the hem of her dress down, and shouts, “You heard her—let’s go!”

Slowly at first, but picking up momentum into a run, the afflicted patients that have suffered for weeks, much like myself, make their escape from this place that promised them a false cure. I can only hope the damage they’ve sustained isn’t as lasting as it has been on me.

As they rush past Lyla, she seems content enough to let them go. Her eyes are only glued to the watch, swinging from Faylie’s hand. Her wings fold along her back. “Never let it be said that I did not have endless mercy.” Her gaze drifts to a few of the slower afflicted, lagging behind the crowd. “Or endless patience. We will simply find them again. It’s only natural to struggle, after all—they’ll be forgiven. It’s just the arrogance that I cannot stand. The proud ignorance to ignore the light of our world in favor of such Godsless pursuits as thievery, or treachery, or degenerate debauchery.

“Still, even now, the forgiveness of the Gods is boundless, and so too must mine be.” She outstretches a hand. “Give me the watch. This is your last chance.”

Alabastra Camin cracks her neck. “Come and get it, Delyla.”

Lyla dashes forward.

As quick as I can, I smash a smoke bomb into the ground, obscuring our separate retreats. Lyla’s wings are a glowing golden lighthouse beam through the fog, beating furiously.

From the other side of the cloud, Alabastra shouts, “Dusty, your armor—”

“Who needs armor?!”, the knight shouts back, as a distinct bass kicks into her voice. And then bursting through my end of the cloud, Tegan is a flurry of feral teeth and razor-blade claws. Her huge and furred form tackles Lyla to the ground, and she rips into the Blessed woman like a saw to wood. Blood spills across the court; its droplets shine like gleaming coins.

I’d think that amount of violent retribution would kill anyone else, but the sorceress launches the werewolf off her with a burst of light. Tegan goes flying through the air, landing with a crash through the roof of a distant building.

Lyla desperately takes to the air, still bleeding, but already starts to seal her own wounds in a flood of divine magic. Ray of glowing gold start to shoot from her hands, causing us to have to dodge her aerial onslaught, before she dives for Faylie.

A fireball is launched from Faylie’s cards, and the sorceress is sent into a corkscrew by the other mage’s spell. Alabastra takes aim and fires, but Lyla blocks her arrow mid-spiral. She closes on the faun, and unleashes a quick burst of light that knocks her off her hooves. When she lands, Faylie swings and tosses the watch to Alabastra.

I toss a healing potion to Faylie, as we watch Lyla divert for our rogue. Alabastra wraps the chain of the watch around an arrow, and fires it into the bark of the rotted tree, then readies a second shot.

Only Lyla doesn’t take the bait this time. She dives for Alabastra, who only barely has enough time to abandon her plan and dodge. Lyla sends a second spell her way, and she doesn’t miss again. Alabastra is send hurtling into a wall, head knocking hard into the brick.

No. No. Unacceptable. I run towards her, as the sorceress makes for the artifact. By the time I reach our leader, another healing potion is already in my hands, and I’m feeding it to her faster than I knew I could work.

Her green eyes flutter open, and she smiles up at me. “I… I really hate that bitch”, she says, still dazed.

Serrones arrives at the tree, and moves to pull the arrow out of the trunk. And then, with a creaking, cracking sound, the branches of the dead tree animate, and wrap around the sorceress, pointed thorns digging into her skin, as she’s held as if by a willowy woman.

To our side, Faylie’s cards glow green as she conjures the spell.

Then Lyla’s body starts to glow bright white, before a bubble of energy bursts from her and sets the tree ablaze.

The explosion knocks us all off our feet again, sending pieces of burning, rotted wood scattered across the courtyard. Lyla walks calmly from the site, completely unmarred by the flame. What wounds she had taken heal before our eyes so fast, that only a moment later, it’s like she never sustained them at all. Her hair glows brilliant gold. Her eyes are empty and shining.

Yet as she walks, she’s stumbling, briefly confused. We’re wearing her down. Just not fast enough. She raises her arms to begin casting again.

And then there’s a loud clink on the floor. The watch lands onto the old stone from its high-flight. It rolls, and rolls, and rolls along the floor…

And stops.

It’s caught under a boot.

Nathaniel Latchet in his ratty trenchcoat, just arrived from the inside of the ruined cloister with two Sable guard behind him, bends down and picks the artifact off the floor.

The entire battle freezes. Not in time—in anticipation. Every soul stares at the detective, waiting for what comes next.

He spools the chain around his fist once, staring into the face. “Huh“, he says, and there is a familiar wonder in his voice. In an instant, he’s seen and understood what he holds in his hand. What it’s capable of. How perfectly it fits him.

Alabastra pulls herself to her feet. “Natey…”, she says, and though her voice is laced with conciliation, her hand twitches toward her quiver. She’s ready for anything. And it strikes me that she may be thinking the same thing I’m thinking, though I imagine we’re both loathe to admit it—if he died, he might take it with him. “Think about what you’re doin’.”

Lyla Serrone, a beacon of magic, stares at the detective. “Latchet, darling, I hope our conduct towards you has not colored your perception on the right thing to do. We need you to use the watch, to help us put a stop to this storm.”

Latchet doesn’t meet either of their eyes. He just keeps staring at the watch face, transfixed by it. Utterly ensorcelled. He scratches his unkempt cheek, tilting his head this way and that.

And then he laughs, just once. I think he’s come to some decision. He says, lax and smug, “Y’know, it’s funny—the two of yous—you both think you’re heroes.” Alabastra’s shoulders square. Lyla hunches down, wings stretching further out. “Maybe in some ways you are. Not for me to say. But you know what the problem with you hero types is?” Finally, he looks up. “Never know when to cut your losses.”

And he clicks down the top of the watch.

It’s impossible to say if the others feel it. But deep in my heart, I know that something profound and immense has occurred. A massive shift in space and time itself, that leaves me breathless and wide-eyed. No time at all has passed, yet where there was Nathaniel Latchet, now there is not.

He’s simply gone.

We all stare at the place he was. The empty space he should be, where he and the watch no longer are. A single beat stretches just a hair too long.

Lyla says, “Where is he?!” She turns to me, and screams it again, “WHERE IS HE?! Where did he GO?!”

“I…” I wouldn’t have a single clue how to answer that.

The sorceress rockets through the air, and in a familiar motion, barrels straight towards me. I try to scramble away, but there’s no point. She pulls me off my feet by the collar of my shirt and lifts us into the air. Ten feet, twenty, thirty… The guard resume the fight in sudden chaos below us. Alabastra takes aim at the sorceress, but Lyla spins around mid-air as she flies up and up, using me like a shield.

I have only a moment to catch the fading green of Alabastra’s eyes, staring up at me. Before Lyla Serrone flies us through the hole in the cavern ceiling.

* * *

We sail upwards through the small waterfall-carved tunnel, before arriving at another level of cavern. We may have just left a church, but this is yet more sacred a place. The greenery on display here is cultivated in well-maintained gardens, crafted with gorgeous colored flowers and trees and hedges that line a half-paved rocky interior. Lamposts light the inside, placed along pathways that curve through the gravel and grass—a cavernous city park. Pillars of intricately carved marble stretch floor-to-ceiling, and at the side of the cavern, metal doors lead to maintenance closets and tunnels, up into the waterworks. From their directions, metal pipework snakes through the cave to the epicenter.

The center of not just this cave, but this city. This country. A churning whirlpool, like the eye of a hurricane, spins in a natural pool the size of a manor. It branches from its spinning edges in eight rivers that flow from it. Some turn to smaller pools, dug into by the metal waterworks, piped out into sewers or carried into deeper aqueducts for drinking. One turns to smaller streams, which fall into the rock naturally, including into the hole we just came from. And one leads into a wide river cutting the central third of this cavern, flowing out to an exit that is open to the air, falling into a much greater waterfall, where below it turns into the river Bassarin that splits the inner city.

Beyond the waterfall’s exit, the open mouth of the cave offers a clear view of the skyline of Nivannen, as its shining lights switch on for the night. And beyond it, the golden skies of sunset. It’s orange-hued rays don’t reach this far into the cavern, but it’s the least of my concerns, regardless. I’m almost out of time.

And we all just lost our only way to get more.

I’m thrown from the sorceress with a torrent of light that burns up my forearms. My world is spinning around and around as I’m sent through the dirt and grass of the garden. Around me, I hear screaming and running. There were people up here. I take a moment to look up and around and see men and women dressed in the garb of waterworks maintenance, and a few Firvus socialites. It seems they were blissfully unaware of the chaos just below their feet.

My eyes cast back to Lyla Serrone, standing furiously ahead of me, fists glowing with light. “Where is he? Where did Latchet take The Timekeeper?!” I don’t even have a chance to answer before she adds a screaming, “ANSWER ME!”

“I don’t know!”, I say. I’m not sure why I bother. I doubt she’ll even listen to the truth anymore. I crawl up to my feet, backing up just slow enough to not set her off, but fast enough to keep the distance as she keeps stalking forward. And then a furious indignation takes me. After all of this, to be cornered here, away from the three of them—it’s untenable. “Why does the watch even matter anymore? This  entire ordeal could be over if you would just admit that you’re wrong!”

She stops, and though her fury is boiling, she takes a moment to look at me, like she’s seeing me in a whole new light. And her voice is bitter and shaken when she says, “I should have never given you the benefit of the doubt. You have abused my kindness. My mercy. I should have known from the start. You truly were behind all of this. The serpent in our garden. The liar. The puppet master. And you tricked me, and doomed us all.” Her voice turns mournful. “I was a fool. But now, at least I will avenge the doom you have wrought.”

I take the moment while she’s raving to slam my last smoke bomb against the floor, in some desperate attempt to find cover. I pull myself around a park tree and hope she doesn’t find me.

Her voice booms against the rock walls of the heart of the city. “Foul monster. Be purged in the light of the Gods!” Her wings buffet, and I hear her take to the skies.

There’s no convincing her. I need to- to feed.

Dammit! I’m out of time. I need a conversation with myself, but she’ll kill me long before I get the chance. I just need a moment to myself. I need her distracted. Anything to stall her. Anything.

CAW.

… Son of a fucking mother fucking—

A second set of wingbeats from the entrance to the cavern is barely audible over the screams of the crowd.

Lyla says, “A… bird…?”

The squawking of Paella the raven, which almost convinces me to simply walk into the light, has her attention. I take the opportunity to run, making for the closest maintenance closet. Behind me, I hear the snapping of branches, a ripping arcane sound like some terrible spell being conjured, and a heavy footfall.

“What in the hells is that?!”, she screams.

As I reach the door and throw myself inside, my stomach raging against me, there’s an unexpected colossal roar like a great beast, and the ground of the cavern itself shakes. What the fuck is happening out there?!

No. Don’t get distracted.

I put a barricading chair against the door and collapse against the inside wall. My fingers dig against the hair above my forehead, and I concentrate.

The thing inside… Fear… if it takes over, it’s sure to perish. A vampire against a sorceress of sunlight—it does not stand a chance. It needs what I know. I need what it can do. I can’t run again. I am horrified beyond words of what I might find inside myself, but I’m out of options, out of choices, and nearly out of chances. It’s time I turned and faced myself.

Like a hand shot into darkness, I think, dive through that hungry feeling, and dare myself to ask, “Is anyone in there?”

This is it. We've pulled out slingshot all the way back. Now let's see how it flies.

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Next update is our book one finale, (1-46) crystallize; on Wednesday, November 27th.