Pale: 10.3 - Lucy
Author: Wildbow

One After Another – 10.3 | Pale

Lucy hesitated, taking it in.  It wasn’t a grand betrayal.  Toadswallow had his goals and whatever the nuances were, he hadn’t wanted to share them.

It felt very lonely, especially with Avery down and Verona out.

She could see Guilherme’s back, and two thoughts crossed her mind, with an emphasis on the cross– that Guilherme was a teacher and a friendly face and that Guilherme was, by his own admission, a manipulator, a villain, a monster, a hero, a true friend, a man who’d been all things and was running out of things to try.  In those things, Lucy knew, were probably events that would be far worse than anything done by violent, abusive goblins, their violence-stoking doppleganger or their living spirit of a soldier who killed both sides before finding his head.

The two thoughts collided and Lucy felt her general frustration at Toad and Guilherme both, felt the drive to go with Guilherme as he slipped into the factory, and both of those things were ‘go’ so she went.

Up to the weather-worn forklift at the side of the building.  Guilherme had moved the wooden pallets aside and there was a gap in the wall, Guilherme tall and majestic on the other side, crouched, spear in hand.  He looked too big to fit through the gap he’d just slipped through.

“This is too dangerous a fight for you,” Guilherme told her.  “You shouldn’t try to confront the man.  Find other ways to help.”

“Isn’t it too dangerous a fight for you?” Lucy accused.

“I’ve been on the other side of this opponent before.”

“Once, a century ago, an Abyssal Spider, stalking the voids of the deepest Abyss.  I had a rivalry with another Fae of High Summer.  It was good, as rivalries go.  Closely matched, to the point every verbal barb could be the deciding factor.  We had our final confrontation balanced on the strands of the spider’s nest, drawing every last thread of our contest together in the end, our time limit defined by the pace with which the threads of webbing ate through our boot soles.”

“I’m not getting it.”

“He weaves his own web, with silver bells instead of black silk web in a lightless cave, each strand dripping acid that can eat through metal.  The habits are similar, the mentality.  I remember a Wraith Socialite in the courts, too.”

“I’m really not seeing where you’re going with this.”

“She was a dark echo in a dark vessel, poorly created by one Fae or another, but none could call her out as such because she could so easily be a trap.  What happens if you call her a poor work of artistry and she turns out to be an allegory you weren’t clever enough to get?  Or a joke ready to be played on whoever stood opposite her to challenge her?  A sword wound is one thing, but being made a fool is the sort of thing that makes noble fae wish to avoid you.  She was left to her own devices, gathering up Fae of the lowest caliber in a network, whispering and communicating, warning.”

“If you want me to do something about the bells then just say it straight, Guilherme.  Or is the common part of it that they all pose a small danger?”

“Not a danger, Lucy, not directly.”

“Just say it straight, Guilherme, I know you’ve got this thing where you want me to connect the dots myself and grow and crap, but I’d rather focus my energies on helping Chloe.  Maybe I can digest the lesson later.”

“The danger is exactly that.  Pressure, inexorable, annoying, sapping away enough of your focus that you cease to grow, or you start taking easier paths.  What a waste it would have been, had I cut the finale of my centuries-long rivalry short, or pushed into predictable action against an echo who was fabricated and convinced she could be a scheming aristocrat on par with Fae.”

“You being a butthead could be called the inexorable, annoying sapping away of my focus, Guilherme.  Do you want me to deal with the bells?”

“I want you to be aware of what the bells are as you deal with-”

She had to work to not raise her voice.  “Yes or no?”

Guilherme turned toward her, shifting his stance.

“No, no, no, don’t twitch muscles or hold your head differently, don’t flip your hair or whatever.  Either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.”

“If you could.  Chloe is no longer chained up, she’ll be another sort of pressure, and the bells he’s tied up inside the building are complicating that.  I can fight him more easily if the bells are handled.”

“That’s not a one word answer.”

“Would you win?  Are you like… you’ve played out nearly all the stories so you’ve seen all the outcomes, right?  Is that-”

He smiled again, but his eyes were sad.

“Some Faerie, especially those of Summer, have sought to be among the best swordsmen, or the best archers, and it tends to be a very short road with no branches to explore or detours.  Seeing swordsmanship as a puzzle to be solved, a formula to be followed, especially when competing with others… it drives you in one direction.  Straight into Winter.  That court is populated with so many who saw swordsmanship as a game like chess, where you can ‘solve’ the game by working out every possible permutation until you have a perfect, never-fail road to victory.  I’ve never sought it out for that reason.”

“I can hold my own but I don’t know if I’d win against him, even with all my skill.  That’s the joy of fighting, having to adapt to what your opponent does.”

“Joy?” she asked, giving him an unimpressed look.  “Look, about the bells, would you give me a bit?  If Chloe’s loose we need to account for that.  Can you watch my back while I work?”

“Yes or no?” she asked, hands on her hips.  Her elbow twinged.

“You’re built like you could be half Fae, Lucy.  It breaks my heart in small ways to see you be so blunt when you have such potential for grace.”

“I’ll try and handle being me, Guilherme, I don’t need the attempt at flattery, if that was what that was.”

“I’ll watch for trouble while you work.  We can’t have Chloe leaping out of the darkness at you.”

Maybe it was unfair to ask a Fae to keep things simple.  Like asking a goblin to sit at the table and maintain perfect table manners.

If Chloe was both berserk and unchained, then protecting the people of Kennet was important.  Verona had sent the things on binding and handling ghouls.

A line of salt would hamper too many of the Others inside.  Lines and shapes were what the ambient, possibly microscopic spirits used to direct things, and the line, as Lucy thought of it, was an order for them to form a wall.  Weak barriers would weaken those who came running through.  Strong barriers would be like a massive glass wall, leeching the Other’s strength with every blow the Other attempted against it, and depending on the difference in power, it could require many, or be fundamentally impossible for the Other.  And the very strongest barriers would leech power for any Other even approaching it.

Barriers could be made strong by having a lot of personal power.  Being a member of a family that had a lot of clout with spirits could make the difference between a simple chalk circle being a minor inconvenience for all but the smallest and most mindless Others, and being that last category where Others of Guilherme or John’s stature would buckle at the knees if they got close.

They could also be made stronger with structure.  More lines, more time spent, more direction in what lesser spirits were meant to be gathering and preparing to defend against…

Lucy didn’t draw a line.  She didn’t want to risk that John could come running out, Witch Hunter hot on his trail, and then hit the wall and find himself trapped or weakened, too slow to run.

Zed’s info on wards helped her here.  So did the lessons from Matthew and Edith.

To start with, she chose the astrological sign for Pluto, because it was close to death, and their second batch of spell notes had worked out how Pluto could signal a diagram to go off when something broke.

Then to frame it, she chose the warding arrangement.  Each of the five major forces had a rune that could be put down or made out of lashed-together sticks.  They’d handled some of that when rebuilding the wards after the skeptic Sharon had torn everything down.  The arrow for War, the forking branch for Nature, the hourglass arrangement of two triangles with points touching for Time, the angular C-shape for Fate, and the gateway, like a keyhole without a floor, for Death.

There was another, and it sometimes replaced nature, sometimes overlapped with Fate, for Fortune, but that was a newer thing.

No, the gateway of Death was the framing she wanted.  She drew it out in chalk, the base touching either side of the gap, with breaks to allow the other four forces passage through.

It would still be a gut punch, probably, especially for weaker Goblins, but it wasn’t made for them.  It would pull at the Death inside them and other things would slip through.

The earring was making this harder than it needed to be.  It was like being a kid again, knowing the shape of the letters she wanted to put down on the page, but not getting the cooperation out of her hand and arm.  The chalk didn’t settle in the smooth and even lines she wanted.

She changed tacks.  She arranged the outside of the gate as an alarm, with the rest balanced against that.  Better.

If this was about spirits… she reached into her pocket, found her phone and coiled up earphones, and selected the first song that felt thematic, close to the top of her playlist.  Au Rii – Dance Into Dark.  A sultry, purring guy’s voice almost straining to push through a backdrop of throbbing, dark instrumentals and a back-backdrop of synths that were just biting enough that they could be hard to listen to.

It made her think of Tymon.  Very guy.  Sexy, as far as she could even articulate that, but also bad for her, dangerous, and she wasn’t the type to chase after that.

The music intensified, and the voice took on a breathless, croaking quality.

It made her think of Verona.  She’d tried the song on Verona once, to good effect, Verona had liked it and then played it on repeat while doing some ink drawings, where Lucy could not take this on repeat.  Verona had chased after that, was actively working out the idea of boys and ‘sexy’.

Verona would have ideas about this.  Maybe even ideas about how to make it more specific, so it wouldn’t even hurt people like John or the goblins a little.  Verona would… probably not match the mood for this specific situation, but would help Lucy figure out how to feel about things in contrast.

She missed Verona.  The humor, the cleverness, the idea that no matter how bad it got, her friend could pull out an idea and salvage things.  Or partially salvage things.  Verona pushed things and kept them from never falling into a rut.

She missed Avery.  Avery was in bed with a killer headache, sleeping most of the day while her mom or dad checked in regularly, forcing her to hide Snowdrop.  Lucy had stopped in.  Avery, who could normally find her way to Lucy’s side even if she was nowhere nearby.  Who was decent enough as a person that it felt like Lucy was better off for it.

Usually.  Usually for all of those things, which was fair and fine.  Everyone made mistakes; sometimes Verona didn’t have ideas or Avery screwed up, like with Pam.

The music throbbed, each beat as heavy as her own heartbeat.  This moment felt a lot like she had felt after lashing out at Avery.

When she’d been afraid that this would all mount up, and that everything would fall down in a way that put all the responsibility on her shoulders.  That she’d be essentially alone against a hostile world.

They’re coming back, she told herself.  We’re collecting some allies.

She glanced at Guilherme, who didn’t move a muscle or say a word.

She resumed her work, but her thoughts were on other dangers.  A share of the people around her were taking sides and one of those sides was against her, Avery, and Verona.  The people who were for them were few.  Edith was almost certainly a danger, Matthew might have been an unwitting one, Maricica was implicated, and she had next to no ideas about the new Others in town.

They’re coming back.  We’re narrowing down the opposition. They can’t hurt us directly.

Chloe couldn’t hurt her directly and intentionally, with the oaths she’d supposedly sworn, but Charles had warned them that creatures acting on instinct could escape the constraints of rules.  This sure seemed like a situation that would fit in that category.

The lines were coming out better, now.  The music played, the lines were straight, and she could do the more detailed work of specifying values.  She had no idea if it would work, but she didn’t want to kill or destroy Chloe, or any lesser goblins who came charging through.  She gave it limits, and then she gave it a trigger word.

“Going to other entrances, I’ll try and circle around, make sure Chloe can’t get out and that stuff stays manageable,” she told him.  “Then I’ll try and come in here and handle the bell.”

“I’ll stay close.  What is the diagram?  Pluto in Death?”

“It’s aimed at Chloe.  Don’t let Nibble run through, and pass on word.  You can break it in a pinch with my last name.”

She circled the factory.  Even with her mask on and the eyes burning red, lighting up her view in a red tint, there were many shapes in the darkness that looked like they could be a Witch Hunter stepping out of the shadows.  A collection of shelving units with the shelves pulled out and stacked against a wall, left there so long that nests had formed in the gaps and corners.  Bird nests up high and rat nests below.

A gunshot within the building made her nearly jump out of her skin.

She pressed on with more urgency.  Both of the earphones were in but her earring let her hear.  She had to cover the bases before helping Chloe.

There was another door that some of the others had used.  It was more obvious, previously chained and padlocked, and the chain had been broken by the Witch Hunter.

She pulled out the bag of chalk, a cloud puffing up as she squeezed it, and she repeated the prior diagram.  The keyhole without a line at the bottom.  The Pluto rune at the center, the offshoot runes, the command word written in nine letters.

She pushed off the ground, dashing to the next point.  Around the corner of the building, a side door that had been unlocked by Bangnut and propped open.

The music throbbed, helping to center her and make her feel attuned to Death.  Death as something seductive to the guys, because Guilherme flirted with it to add spice to life and John kept on sacrificing his frigging self and Lucy was worried it would one day stick.  Death as dark and uncomfortable and intense as an idea.

“What are you doing?”

Lucy sprang to her feet, backing up.

A woman’s voice.  Edith’s eyes were visible, burning like coals in a fire, parts growing in brightness and intensity and then fading out without clear reason.  The rest of Edith followed.

“Keeping Chloe inside,” Lucy said.  “She’ll be slowed down a lot if she comes through.”

Edith looked down at the beginnings of the diagram.  “Don’t.”

“Any reason?” Lucy asked.

“Because I said not to, Lucy.  It’s uncomfortable to be sealed within.”

“Sure will be a heck of a lot more uncomfortable if Chloe gets out and hurts someone.”

“I’m asking you not to,” Edith said.

“And I’m asking you to give me a reason better than ‘it’s uncomfortable’.  You’d better believe I’m dealing with uncomfortable stuff for all your sakes, like even being here tonight-”

“We didn’t ask, Lucy.  You offered.  Matthew and I made it clear you have no obligation to be out here and in danger.”

“Because you guys are handling this stuff that great without us?  I live here, Edith.  My mom lives here, my brother visits, I have friends here in Kennet, I have classmates, I have boys I like.”

“If you guys screw up, and if this becomes a knotted place, or if Others start hurting innocents in larger numbers and that becomes the new rule, that’s my life on the line.  That’s my day to day, full, whole life that gets turned upside down.  I don’t want a ghoul running around if my mom might be out picking up milk from the store, or if one of my teachers could be walking their dogs.”

“An out of control ghoul getting at family members is something that could affect Matthew or me just as easily.  But you, as so many practitioners do, seem to treat binding diagrams and your ability to entrap us in a-”

There were two more gunshots.

“-cavalier way.  It’s easy for you and life altering for us,” Edith finished.

“I guess we know which way your vote fell in the big debate over whether to teach us binding.  But we had to go to the Blue Heron instead.”

“I’d rather you hadn’t gone at all, for reasons I think are obvious.”

“The way I’m doing this, it’s tilted at Chloe.”

“With Death.  Something that has a firm grip on Edith James,” Edith said, the tone of her voice changing.

“Yes, well, if Verona were here I’m sure she’d have some better ideas on how to specifically target Chloe, but for right now and right here, Edith, I’m going to write it in a way where you just have to say my last name to destroy the diagram.  It only affects those without the sense to remember what my last name is.”

“Ellingson,” Edith said.

“It’s not written yet,” Lucy said.  Only the ‘gate’ was drawn, with the Pluto rune, and some of the alarm stuff.

“That’s my point.  What if you make a mistake, Lucy?  What if you give it too much power?  What if you get interrupted and trap me and Nibble within, with a berserk ghoul?  What if it cuts off my access to spiritual and elemental power?  What if you draw it perfectly, balance everything with care, and the Witch Hunter runs out, leaping over much of the diagram but mars your name, so the passphrase to break it is ruined?”

“Do you have a better idea on keeping Chloe inside?”

“I have fire, she doesn’t like it.  Others have their own ideas.  I want you to trust us, Lucy.”

“I want you to trust me.  And Avery.  And Verona.  We’re not going to, like, draw a diagram that I very specifically intended to be weak, then leave you trapped here forever.  You picked us!”

“Miss selected you, and she hasn’t stuck around to explain her thought processes.”

“And you guys agreed.  That was a big part of the awakening ritual.  I swore what I swore in pretty damn good faith, Edith.  And I’m pretty sure that that not every Other who was there was returning that favor.  Now I told Guilherme that I’d try to finish this and come back to him.  Now, unless you or someone else forces me to stop, I’m going to keep working on this in good faith, which is better than some of you deserve.”

Edith didn’t respond.  She remained there, staring at Lucy.

So Lucy, under Edith’s gaze, drew out the lines.  Edith stood inside, back to the wall by the door, her attention split.  Lucy crouched, drawing out lines with extra care.

She halfway expected that she would finish, write out the command phrase to break it, and then Edith would speak up, destroying it.

“Are the others okay?”

“Goblins died,” Edith said.

“None you’re close to.”

“That doesn’t make it much better.”

Isn’t your energy better spent helping than here, arguing with me?

Lucy finished the diagram.  She straightened, her things in hand.

Edith’s eyes glowed as she stared out the door at her.

Lucy could remember the voice, spelling out how the Others fully intended to get rid of them.

The look on Edith’s face was exactly the expression Lucy imagined someone could wear while saying that.

Lucy could remember how Edith had looked, outside that cabin they’d just recently gone back to with Melissa.  The intensity, the danger.  And that was the natural conclusion of someone saying that, someone wearing that expression, then taking the declared action.

She thought of the syringe.  Dark Fae in design, holding a bit of Edith’s Doom within.

“What happened, Edith?” Lucy asked, quiet, as she backed up.  “It was nice, once.  Learning basic runes while you guys made barbecue.”

“Answering that question would take longer than we have.”

Edith didn’t volunteer anything.  Lucy looked off to the side, then abandoned the conversation.  Abandoned this.

She’d done a full loop around the building.  There were maybe other ways out, but she couldn’t cover windows or the roof.

She reached the forklift, circling around the chalk pattern she’d laid out earlier.

Then inside.  She crossed the diagram with care, slipping on the weapon ring.

Something crashed upstairs.

It wasn’t as wide open as many factories were in the news.  There were individual sections, separated by partial walls, with tons of stuff packed up here, some of it of varying ages.  A whole lot of wooden chairs with metal bits, wood rotting and metal rusting, until they were a confusing jumble to the eye.  She could see the main areas that led off to the other two doors she’d prepared.

“He’s upstairs.” Guilherme’s voice was gentle, soft enough she wasn’t sure it was a voice until she recognized the sounds and the way he enunciated things.  “He’s unwilling to jump from a window.”

“Down here.  Not that far away.  Take care as you walk down this way,” he said, stepping out of shadows, his voice still a gentle whisper that could be mistaken for ambient noise.  She could have used her earring to pick out the sound.  “There’s a tripwire.”

“Jeez,” she whispered back.

She saw it.  Even when she was looking for it, it was hard to make out.  She saw a line across the floor that ran counter to worn old floorboards, thought that was the tripwire, and then looked for how he’d rigged it, only to spot the little staple that had been pushed into the wood, further down, a knot of thin wire tied around it.

None of it turned up to her Sight.  It was hard to make out even with night vision.

Guilherme whispered to her.  “He’s a man who dresses things up in patterns.  The bells are arranged by a system only he understands, woven into a tapestry.  Ten paces before he ties a bell to a tree, then seven, then twenty, then a trap.  Inside, those numbers are much smaller.”

“What does that mean?” Lucy asked.  “Practically?”

“Move with care, expect him to have a very specific way he wants to make his retreat.”

She moved with care.  Gently, carefully, she stepped over the tripwire.

She could see the bell through a hole in the wall just barely wide enough for her to slip through.  It was hanging over something that could have been a tape player, flat, long and rectangular.  Something had been rubbed on the silver to tarnish it, making it disappear easily in the gloom, without reflections.

Lucy ventured closer to the bell, mindful of the wire near the floor.

She stopped short of passing through.  At the level of her chest was another wire, stretching across the hole.

There was a gunshot upstairs.  It boomed through the building, and Lucy flinched.  She managed to not move her feet or lurch forward into the waiting wire.

“Good, you saw it.  Your instincts are strong, Lucy.”

“Maybe tell me about these things before I almost walk into them?” she asked, frozen in place, studying the situation.

“I’d rather instruct than tell.  I won’t let too much harm come to you,” he told her.

She drew a marker from her pocket, then reached into her pocket for the Hot Lead, contained in a case she’d inscribed with insulating runes.

Hot air blasted out as she cracked it open.  It didn’t like being contained.  She held it, and it felt like it was searing the flesh of her palm.

The weapon ring let her turn the marker into a rod, and she placed it down on the ground, something to lean against for balance while ducking beneath the wire.  She had to use the top end of the rod as a tool to press her hair down so the puff of her afro-ponytail didn’t bump the wire.

There was another cassette on the wall.  Except it wasn’t a tape player.  It wasn’t a gun or an obvious bomb either.

She abandoned the rod, but kept the ring and hot lead ready.  She could spend a minute disarming this arrangement, but… instead she reached out to touch it, laying her hand flat against the side.

The weapon ring transformed it into a weapon.  A squat, rectangular shotgun.  Ball bearings spilled out into the floor as she tipped it down to look at the handle.

“Silver,” Guilherme remarked, from the other side of the hole in the wall.  “It smells like gunpowder and salt.”

She nodded slowly.  She set the cartridge-shotgun down, the open end facing away from herself and toward an open area, and was especially mindful of the wire as she let it stop being a shotgun.

The wire came free, dropping loose to the ground.  Lucy’s finger remained on the little spring-loaded catch, her eyes casting it in a red light in the otherwise total darkness, while the fingers of her free hand carefully explored the surface while keeping the body of the thing from moving.  It was the same end result, to either let the cartridge body be still but the little catch snap left, or letting the cartridge body move right while holding the catch still.

She found a depression.  Pressing in, it partially ejected the ammunition.  Ball bearings in separate compartments, then three shotgun shells, banded in yellow tape, marked with a circle that had a horizontal line through it.

With no ammunition, she could let go of the catch.  The little cartridge-bomb kicked, but there was nothing for it to shoot.

The other arrangement was more tricky.  The bell hung from a wire close to the ceiling, and instead of something to ring the bell, there was another wire extending straight down from the bell to another cartridge, which sat atop something round, like one of Barbie’s cookie tins that she’d crack open for Lucy and the other grandchildren at teatime.

Not that Barbie and Ran really invited them over or had them over much since Lucy’s dad had died.

That cartridge, sitting in a depression in the floor where floorboards had rotted, that was what really spooked Lucy.

“Lucy,” Guilherme whispered.

Lucy turned her head, then saw.  Not Guilherme.  A ghoul.

Chloe moved through the darkness like it was her friend, crouching and not really slower for that crouching.  The paleness of her skin didn’t do a thing to make her more visible in the dark.  Her shirt was torn, and it looked like she’d taken a direct hit from one of the traps, because her neck, shoulder, arm, and part of her upper body was dotted with deep, raw, red holes.  Where the holes were bad enough that bone was exposed, it looked like the bone had thorns on it.

All down the girl’s spine, spikes jutted from skin, and those spikes branched, with hooks, barbs, and almost decorative elements.  At her side, through the hole in her shirt, ribs did much the same thing.

Option one was to stay quiet, hoping Chloe moved on.

Lucy was bad at staying quiet when something upset her, and this was really freaking upsetting.  Standing a foot away from a supernatural-sensitive jury-rigged shotgun trap while a feral ghoul was nearby.

The ghoul stiffened.  It looked as if the body fat on her drew back and away, exposing the lines of muscle and angular bones.  She looked even less human than she had, arms crossed over one another, front claws on ground, back arched, legs out, all tension.

Her mouth yawned open, and Lucy could see the teeth.  Many had two or three points, jutting out at different angles.  They looked more like they were for tearing in a vicious way than for anything efficient.

“You swore things when you joined Kennet.  Protecting me and the other two should have been one of them.  We swore to protect the Others of this place.  By the oaths, Chloe, I am not your prey.”

Chloe stared at her.  Had anything changed?

“Dally with me instead, Chloe,” Guilherme said.  “Here.”

He rapped something, and Chloe lunged.  She barely twisted as she did it, and went from facing Lucy to lunging right with scarcely a turn of the head.

The bell swayed slightly at the impact of Guilherme and Chloe moving.

Lucy got to work.  The bell in the field, she remembered, had acted up when she’d gotten within a foot or so of it.  She gave this one a safe distance of a foot and a half.

There were two cartridges, though.  The one facing the hole, probably a directed shotgun-like blast of silver ball bearings and salt… and the one it was poised on, which looked set to fire in a ring around it.

Couldn’t disturb the bell without setting off both weapons, probably.  If she had to guess, the weight of the shotgun cartridge was resting on some button or landmine-like switch that would trigger it to go off if the shotgun thing was lifted away or moved away while shooting.

So she couldn’t disturb the all-around thing either, not without-

There was a crash.  A hiss.  Chloe’s.

“Our man is upstairs,” Guilherme said, calm.  “He’s holed up and I know from my experience with a certain Abyssal Spider and a social schemer of a Wraith that he wants to draw things together.  He’s arranging a tight cluster of traps around himself, making approach hard.  When he’s ready, he’ll move out.”

“Can we smoke him out?  Burn him?”

“Not without risking setting things off.  Maricica’s closer to that right this moment and she doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Hmmmm,” Lucy replied, noncommital.

“She wouldn’t put her own skin in danger, Lucy.”

She carefully circled the room, mindful of more wires.  She had the suspicion that if there were more wires, they’d be tied to this setup.

Couldn’t use glamour.  She could otherwise turn to smoke, contain this, then set it all off.  Problem was, it was silver.  Silver had a lot of influence on Faerie stuff, because it was linked to Winter.

She adjusted position until she could see more of the factory.  Montague was creeping along the wall, spidery limbs reaching out.  Chloe was huddled by the fridge, which was open and releasing frosty air.  There was meat inside and she was eating.

From the dent on the fridge door it looked like Guilherme had tossed her into it and the door had bounced open.  Chloe wanted food and now she had it.

Lucy was well aware that fresh meat was preferable to a ghoul like Chloe, over frozen meat.

Edith guarded one of the exit routes, eyes glowing, the ground liquid around her feet, candles in shallow bowls floating in the liquid.

A wounded Bluntmunch was in the other hallway, surrounded by goblins.  Nibble crouched by the big goblin, watching Chloe from the very opposite end of the building.  One of his legs was bent.  The other was severed at the knee.

“You’re a clever girl, Lucy,” Guilherme said.  “You’ve learned many tricks when separated from your friends.  That’s a cleverness you need to embrace and capture.  You can do this.”

And if she couldn’t?  Falling from the balcony near the Abyssal Beast had been a scare.  So had their last run-in with the Witch Hunter.

She’d had other scares too.  Her fingers touched her arm where the Nettlewisp had been.

Some small, subconscious part of herself had liked being prickly.  She’d liked that aesthetic, the twining vines, the spikes, the barbs.

She backed away from the arrangement in the center of this room, which had once housed some big machine that had since been taken away.  That weight had damaged the floor and the damage to the floor had gotten worse, creating the depression, a small crater of broken floorboards that the trap had been set in.

Some of those floorboards were part of the trap.  Many Others couldn’t even approach the bell without it ringing and the rigged traps going off.  But for someone who could, like Lucy or even Melissa, stepping on the wrong floorboard would jostle the entire arrangement.

Her back to the wall, Lucy put the weapon ring away.  She kept the hot lead.

Glamour was tricky.  Glamour required belief.

She believed, as she drew on the power of the Hot Lead and moved her hand, encouraging the glamour to reach out.

Smoke reached like hands and vines, bristling, casting eerie shadows on the wall from the faint red light of her mask’s eyes.  She gestured, sending out one strand, then moved her hand, sending out another, down toward her foot, her foot moving to give it direction.

The Hot Lead was the bullet John had given them, a little power source.  The power was elemental, and so was the smoke she was encouraging.

The limbs that reached out settled and condensed into strands, branching and flowering.  Holding floorboards as rigid as possible, first, then creeping along floor and the ceiling above.

She’d heard what Alpeana had done, to get to the Witch Hunter in dreams, most of that hearing secondhand.

Take over the surroundings, cut the center off from everything else…

She moved with excessive care as she reached along the ceiling until she reached the point were the bell hung from.  She did the same at the floor.

Alexander had taught them about coup and claim.  She claimed this for herself.  She found the other connections to the other bells in this building and held them firm.

Shadowy hands gripped the wire above and below the bell and held it fiercely taut.  The bell jostled as smoke reached toward it from one direction, tugging, ready to pull away and jangle, but a reaching out of smoke from the opposite direction made it move back to center instead.

And when she reached out from all directions, it had nowhere to go.

She stepped away from the wall and toward the bell, reaching out with a hand.

She closed her hand around it, still holding everything firm.

The glamour knew what she liked, and mimed it.  As tendrils settled on her, they mimicked the exaggerated color and style that she’d worn when making her arenas with Guilherme.

The glamour snaked along the connections between bells, and she moved her fingers carefully, rubbing thumb against fingertips in the crude motions that Maricica and Guilherme had instructed them in.  Rotating colors.  A little rub outward, thumb leaving the pads of those fingers.

The connections between bells lit up, turning a red-pink.

Near the fridge with the disabled interior light, Chloe shrank back from the glow.  Guilherme stepped out, casting vague shadows as he was illuminated.

Edith watched Lucy with more caution in her eyes than she reserved for Chloe.

The Hot Lead was cooling in her hand, and there was only so much glamour in the compact.

So she used what she had, to begin with.

Mine, she thought, reaching out toward the densest cluster of bells.  This arrangement of traps their Witch Hunter had worked out.

Whatever they were doing, she didn’t want his blood on her hands, so she reached out with the pink, toward the bells, working at holding everything firm while asserting an obvious claim over it all.

He did something.  The glamour faltered, hit hard enough that the reaching tendrils between her and him in that far upstairs corner of the factory were cut in half.

She pushed out, spending residual power to reach back-

Gunshots.  He tore out of the hallway, shooting as he did.

There were answering flashes without noise.  John.  Lucy had never meant for him to keep the silence rune on the gun.  She wondered for a moment if he’d want something more permanent-

Other things were more pressing.

She tugged on connections, exerting control.

That cost her more than whatever the Witch Hunter had done, but it set off what sounded like six different gunshots behind the man.

Then the Witch Hunter and John were at the stairs.  John was already wounded, the wound bandaged in a way suggesting it was old.  The Witch Hunter went down the stairs in a way that could have been a tackle and could have been a fall.

Lucy shook her head.  She had to find herself.  Fogging her head and believing this glamour out there, tracking it all in a general way, it was dangerous.

“Go back to the fridge.”  Edith’s voice was distant, but Lucy’s earring picked it up.

Chloe had ventured forward.  So had Nibble.  Chloe’s attention was on the stairs.  Nibble’s on Chloe.

“Chloe,” Edith warned.  “Leave it be, go to the fridge.  There’s lots of food.”

The feral Chloe edged closer to the violence, shying away from the dwindling strands of red where Lucy’s grip on the wires was weakening.

They’d scared the Witch Hunter out of his hiding place, and the man now wrestled with John.  A fight he was winning, except the goblins were venturing closer.

“Montague!” Matthew called out.  “Secure the remaining traps!  See if you can’t get the network!  Lucy, signal him!”

There was a moment, brief, where it sure seemed like the Witch Hunter had looked at Lucy.

The clotted blood carpet of distorted, burned crimson crept along the wall to the upstairs.  Lucy pushed out more of the glamour, faint, to highlight the network for him.  She held things firm, felt a tug as he did something.

And she could see it as Montague reached back.  Lucy’s influence was a light pink, a literal change of color to highlight and help.  Montague’s influence was heavy, weighing down wire until it sagged, turning hair-thin wires into cords a half-inch thick, dripping.  Some spikes and spidery legs stuck out, twitching.

The Witch Hunter’s strength was that he was so alert, so capable of watching his own back and keeping track of every last one of them.

Lucy had no idea how the Kennet Others had let them get this far.  Nibble had to lean on a wall to prop himself up, because one of his legs was partially missing, the end ragged.  Chloe was a mess, wounded by several traps, and she’d apparently been in a bad state before.

Montague’s reaching being extended far enough down the trap network that spidery fingers were nearly touching Lucy’s.  Even something as simple as a network of reaching glamour was something he could take over.  Food for thought.

The traps were under their control.  Montague surrounded the traps in his own distorted being, then lifted them up and away from the ground, leaving the bell swinging from the wire.

That made Lucy tense on its own, but the Witch Hunter wasn’t in a position to follow up that cue with a gunshot.

Surrounding the Witch Hunter like this had required that they first form a very wide net.  Lucy had the feeling they’d let him pursue the ghouls, surrounded him from a very wide distance he couldn’t necessarily track, where bells and his influence were thinner, and treated the ghouls as a sacrifice or necessary risk to get the man under control.

Which got him here, fighting John, pulling away to aim, shooting at goblins and hitting none as John pulled at his arm, drawing him back into a headlock.  Guilherme approached, as did goblins.

“Watch Chloe,” Nibble called out.

Chloe hissed in response, prowling a bit closer.

“I’ve got-” Guilherme said.

Three things happened in the same moment, and there was nothing Lucy could do about it.  Chloe was fast, and Guilherme had taught Lucy about being fast, fighting against fast.  He knew well enough what to do.

But Edith was ready, too.  Fire erupted between Chloe and everyone else.

Chloe and Guilherme were both blinded by the burst of flame, Guilherme already moving forward, and in his grace unable to steer out of it.  He walked facefirst into flame and stepped out of the side of it, flesh seared, eyes squinted shut.

So Edith put the fire out.

Chloe reacted too, but Chloe, though blind, had other senses.

And virtually nobody in Kennet was working together in all of this, or they were so different that they didn’t mesh.  Goblins didn’t cooperate, Maricica was in the background while Guilherme was reeling from being on fire, and there were only two individuals who weren’t concerned about causing friendly fire or suffering from it.

Chloe tore into the crowd.  She pursued the wounded, which started with Nibble and Bluntmunch, shied away from goblin firecrackers, then went after John, biting at his foot, as he lay across the stairs with the Witch Hunter, trying to strangle the man out into unconsciousness.

Freeing the Witch Hunter.

Lucy backed away a bit, taking cover.

He unclipped one of the circular trap things from his belt, with two remaining, and tossed it into the back of the pack of goblins.

Humpydump threw himself on top of the thing.  It detonated, muffled.  The flash startled Chloe into letting go of John, while bowling over half the crowd.

Chloe looked like she was going to lunge straight into the middle of it all, but another gout of flame from Edith made her back away.  Closer to the fridge.

She turned her attention to Edith instead.

Another burst of flame and the emergence of the Girl by Candlelight made her change her mind.

Lucy’s eyes widened as she realized who the most apparent target was.  Chloe’s face turned her way, face and gums blanched to the point that the spots where skin ended, gum started, gums ended, and teeth began were all obscured.  Flesh was red rimmed around the spots where teeth and bone jutted out, but red was everywhere, splashed.  Mostly around the ghoul’s mouth.  Thick strings of John’s blood dribbled down from her mouth.

Guilherme was partially blind, head turned away, spear in hand, as he faced off against the Witch Hunter.  Doglick perched on a wounded and healing John, growling aggressively.  Goblins milled around, many hurt from the muffled trap that had put silver ball bearings throughout their number.

Lucy made a spear, quickly.  Chloe came for her, respecting the spear’s point, swatting at it.

Every lesson Lucy had had with Guilherme fled her mind as she fought.  It was frantic, full of second guesses on what her weapon should be.  Javelin- knife.  Shorter as Chloe got closer.  She swiped, fended her off, and then claws gripped her wrists, the whole of Chloe lunging and shoving her hard into the wall.

Even like this, even wounded, Chloe was several times stronger than her.  Her hands strained to reach up and do something, and all she managed to do was abrade her wrists as she rubbed skin up against ragged claws.

Red spidery legs reached down from the ceiling, grabbing at Chloe, and Lucy strained to get away.  She couldn’t- couldn’t make headway toward the hole in the wall she’d come through, that had been trapped.

She reached over for the one she’d disarmed.  The ammo was still partially popped out the back.  She picked it up, slammed it into the wall, and then pressed it against the side of Chloe’s torso.  Her thumb fumbled for the little catch that the string had been tied to.

Chloe pulled a claw free of Montague’s grip, then swung it forward.  Lucy jerked her head to one side, and claw-tips impaled the plaster, raking through it.

Lucy found the catch that served as the trigger for the little trap, then changed her mind.  She aimed down, twisting her lower body away, and pressed the muzzle against Chloe’s thigh.

It went off, the entire thing springing out of her hand and clattering to floor, a jolt so forceful it went up her arms to her ribs and stomach, but it didn’t feel as strong as it was supposed to be.

It still hurt Chloe.  Without killing her.

Lucy was able to pull away, letting Montague grab at Chloe while she headed for the hole in the wall.  The other tripwire was disabled.  She just had to get outside.

“Lucy!” John called out.

She looked back, not sure what she could say, still with that faint half-second of hesitation before anything she said that could end up being a lie.

She meant to look back and call out to the others, but Chloe, Montague still grabbing at her, was only a few paces behind, tearing out of the hole in the wall, finding Lucy a moment later.  She was barely slowed down by the huge hole in her thigh.

Lucy ran for the diagram she’d drawn out.  A barrier meant for ghouls.  She leaped over the chalk, foot finding the wheel-well of the forklift.

Her eyes adjusted to the light of the moonlight outside, magnified by the mask she wore, and she saw the chalk.

Chloe leaped past it, catching Lucy.

How much of this was intentional?

The fact that the people who had gotten hurt were not their prime suspects.  John, the goblin riff-raff, Guilherme…

Lucy fell with Chloe into the driver’s seat of the forklift, branches that had found their way there breaking under her back.

Chloe reached, claw out, and the steering wheel and cramped confines limited what she could do, reaching.  If she’d had more sense she would have figured it out but she was almost animal like this.  She snapped instead, and Lucy pulled her head down and away from the seat, toward the pedals, to stay away, tears in her eyes.

The other claw held her arm, and squeezed, tight.

She’d expected snarling, hissing, ravenous sounds.  But Chloe snapped, pulled on Lucy’s arm to try to get her closer, Lucy’s fingers finding the gap between seat and backrest to strain to avoid letting her arm get pulled up to where it could be chewed on…

…And Chloe made small, desperate sounds, almost whimpering.  Chloe had tears in her eyes too.

Chloe wormed her way in by inches, ribs hard and jagged against Lucy’s upper body, and Lucy pulled her way back by half inches.

Another inch closer for Chloe.  A half inch back for Lucy.  The teeth drawing closer.  Lucy had to turn her face away.

She pulled the weapon ring on, aware that the strength it cost her to use was strength she needed to defend herself.

The marker from her pocket extended into a fighting staff.  The base hit the ground near rusted over pedals and the end extended up to Chloe’s chin, pressing head up and away.  Chloe reared back, then snapped at it.

“By oaths we swore,” Lucy breathed the words, gasping out her breaths because she didn’t have the ghoul’s weight pressing on her anymore.  “This isn’t what we’re after.”

It didn’t make sense as a whole sentence, but she wasn’t in a place to string thoughts together.

Chloe, the marker-staff in her mouth, locked the cataract-glazed eyes with Lucy.

Lucy had five ideas for what she might say in the span of three seconds- not words but ideas, and every single one ventured too close to things that might set Chloe off again.

She settled on just saying, “Go.”

Chloe pulled back, leaped over the blurry chalk smear on the ground, and went back inside.

Leaving Lucy lying across the driver’s seat.  Lucy let out a one-note sob of a breath.  Relief and the cost of the weapon ring had sapped all her strength.

She picked herself up, investigated the gouges where Chloe’s ribs had rubbed against her side, and then used her cape because it was the only material she had to press against the wound and stop the bleeding.

She was wobbly as she walked around to the other side of the forklift.

Someone or something had wiped away the diagram that would have stopped Chloe in her tracks.  In the best case, left alone, the diagram should have sapped Chloe’s strength, leaving her weak as a baby but alive, with room to recover strength and sanity.

Someone or something had wiped it away.

Someone or something had done this.  All of this.  The chaos, the infighting, the selective harm… playing games with very real things on the line.

Lucy found her chalk with shaking hands, and drew a big fat line at the door.

She thought long and hard about doing it everywhere.  Keeping people inside and interrogating them.

There was no way that would work.  There were other exits and she didn’t have enough chalk.  It would turn friends into enemies.

She felt very alone, out here.

She didn’t go back inside, she wasn’t that brave.

Instead, she went to the corner of the building, where she could watch two exits, and she tried to pull herself together.  Weapon ring, the last of the glamour gripped in her palm, and two cans of awful, awful apple soda.

She was so shaky and physically wonky she could barely taste the one she opened.

She told herself that the Witch Hunter could emerge, to not be surprised, that this was what he did.

When he actually did step outside, however… she couldn’t help but be surprised.

He limped, favoring one leg, and he was bleeding in a few places.  Fishmittens charged him from behind, and he didn’t put up a great fight against the small goblin, but he did throw the goblin aside after getting bitten a few times.

Lucy let her second can of soda become a gun.

She couldn’t bring herself to raise it.  She’d wrestled with the idea of bringing the knife.  Lifting a gun, even on a night like tonight… it wasn’t what she wanted.

Alyssa had said to start from compassion and she was really fucking trying, with Chloe especially, but it was the furthest thing from easy.

A girl’s voice.  Lucy raised her head.

Melissa, approaching at a run.

John followed the Witch Hunter out, Doglick at his side, the goblin dancing around him and headbutting his leg ineffectually every time it looked like he’d teeter over.

John, Lucy, and the Witch Hunter all shouted out to Melissa to get away.

There were still ghouls around.  There could be more traps in the area.  There was-

Melissa didn’t stop.  “Witch Hunter!”

“Stop!” Lucy shrieked.

It was the Witch Hunter who stopped.  He had only one of the fire-in-all directions traps on him now, and he tugged it free, facing Melissa.

He turned his head, looking around him.

Montague rose around him in a ring.  Bells tinkled, and traps were leveled.

Melissa stopped running, skin tearing away in folds that reached around.  She lifted up off the ground, slender, tall, dark-haired Maricica, looking down at the encircled Witch Hunter.

Lucy looked away, hand cupped so she couldn’t see the man.  It was clear what would happen.

She could see Maricica though.  The Faerie gestured, making a gesture like she was flicking at the man.

The sound of it all was too much.  Lucy turned away, walking, without looking at the aftermath.

No, there was more aftermath to be had.  This wasn’t the sort of thing that settled this easily.  The Witch Hunter had friends, he had an employer, and…

Too much of this had happened because key people in Kennet had let it.