Break 3
Author: Wildbow

Break 3 | Pale

Next Chapter

The Alabaster Doe endured an existence of paradoxes.  Few things drove that home as much as her role here at the arena.  An architect of mercy paying witness to a fierce battle of strength.  John Stiles leading his group of soldiers against the wolves of the Ephemeral Alpha, two very different sorts of hunter and fighter fighting viciously.  The first irony was that she was very well equipped to study what was happening.

The Arena was meant for John, for John was closest to the throne.  Cover, environment, rubble, it all suited a Dog of War and his collection of soldiers.  Horseman was the vanguard, backed by Angel, moving smoothly and easily from one piece of cover to the next.  Angel was fast enough to be the bait, drawing attention, while Horseman had a good sense of the enemy.  Many could look at how they moved, arguing they were too far away from their fellow soldiers.

Even Ondvarg the Ephemeral Alpha saw that.  With a shift of position, and a movement of his head, to bring other wolves into the very edge of his vision, he signaled a group of wolves that had ascended, moving closer to the spotlights higher in the sands.  They cast long, complicated shadows.  Ondvarg moved through those shadows with the others, appearing to dip into the shadows as a fish might dip beneath water.  John shouted a command, bidding Horseman to come to him.

The blood-soaked rink was off limits for the contestants.  The Alabaster stood beside Sable Prince and Aurum Coil, amid the various other contestants, standing in blood that wouldn’t dry, just deep enough that it could work its way between toes without covering them.

The ring around the rink was where the fighting happened.  The chairs had been mounted on exaggerated concrete steps, but the seats were gone.  The staggered concrete made for uneven but predictable footing.  Piles of the removed plastic seating, arrangements of plywood, and metal from the rafters complicated the area.

The wolves moved through the altered shadow they’d cast, past the short end of the rink to the corner, where Horseman was.  The man might have been able to run back to ground where his friends could support him if those chasing him were human, but they weren’t.  They ignored Angel, properly dismissing her as bait.

The soldier Black was not allowed on the rink at the center of the Arena, but that didn’t stop her from taking a makeshift explosive and sliding it hard across the ice.  Not just a makeshift explosive, but a dirty one.

The Aurum’s centipede moved quickly, surrounding Alabaster, Sable, and the other contestants.  The corner of the rink detonated, concrete shifted, plywood and metal fell away.  The blast ripped past them, even with the giant centipede protecting them.  More important for John Stiles, glamour was shattered.

The remainder of John’s squad opened fire into the smoke.  Into the massive gap opened up by the detonation.

“Horse!” John hollered into the cacophony.  “One!”

Horseman pivoted to his one o’clock position, and though the area was filled with smoke, he opened fire.

“Three!”

Horseman didn’t even reload, drawing another gun and firing at an angle John’s group couldn’t.

Horseman, too, had been bait.

Three wolves lay dead on the concrete steps, one of them in tatters such that it no longer resembled a wolf.  Ondvarg retreated to where he could lick his wounds away, eyes narrowed, glaring through darkness.

The bird flew through the space, its movements careful and intelligent, removing sources of light, one by one.  Wolves could see in the dark.  Except for two soldiers, John’s group couldn’t.

The inherent paradox in the Alabaster began when she took the role.  The Carmine fought, the Aurum played, the Sable set a price, and the Alabaster died.

It was her job to help a hero from the nadir of their journey to where they needed to be.  She could set courses, adjust fate, put allies in their way.  Those who hunted her could face the opposite, both before and after.  She would use those things to make the hunt harder but fair.  But the hunter that found her was put to a final test.  The paradox of mercy: to take a role that put such emphasis on mercy, one had to give none to their predecessor, and in the doing they would disqualify themselves.  If they could not reconcile that, they weren’t fit for the role, and fate would thus turn on them.  A gun could misfire.  An axehead could fly from a handle to spin through the air, before embedding itself in their skull.  Practice could turn.  An Other’s nature could turn against them.

The obvious answer was to hurt her so badly that death was a mercy.  It wasn’t without precedent.  Even Mother Theresa had venerated suffering while claiming Mercy.  Still, she’d grown past that kind of easy solution, and she’d figured out ways to answer it.  The other obvious answer was that it was mercy if one could intuit that the Alabaster was done with the role.  She was safe from that; she wasn’t done.

Like John’s departed friend Yalda, the Alabaster was a protected sort of innocence.  Those who harmed an Alabaster risked fate turning on them, but if they did it without taking the seat, they could gain the power, protection, and privilege without the responsibility.  It would only come at a cost of fate turning on them, a karmic bankruptcy.  Still, enough made the choice that the number of Alabasters effectively dwindled.

She, more than her fellow judges, reached into surrounding regions to make up for absences.  She had lasted for longer.  She represented something that was faltering.

The world might have been forgetting what mercy was.

The songbird that was tearing out the wires was being careful to avoid getting in the way of the soldier’s bullets.  It took its time, keeping to cover, flying high to get into the rafters, descending where draping signage hid it from view.

One more light removed, a little more than half the arena cast into darkness.  John’s group was arranged in a broad patch of light.  The darkness beyond had prowling wolves.

Ondvarg turned the shadows against them.  Movements, tricks of the eye.  Some baited out lone gunshots.

To survive as prey, one had to anticipate every move their enemies might make.  She had learned this.  She was good at it.  A game of chess, tiled with field, water, sky, and hill, every animal with its own ability to move.  An ongoing interplay of Abyss, of Faerie, of goblin, of spirit.  Of Innocent.

Ondvarg barked out a warning, the noise echoing through the space.  The bird, however, was too far into its swoop to heed that warning.

One too few soldiers in the group Ondvarg stalked.

Hidden amid rubble, the soldier that had taken the nickname Elvis took one shot at the bird.  The bird evaded, but the shot clipped its talon.  One thing, to throw its entire orientation off mid-flight, to force it to flap violently to compensate for the fact one foot had been swept out of existence.

A second shot ended it.

Had Ondvarg known more about birds, he might have been able to avoid that.

Wolves moved as a group in the moment the soldier’s attention was elsewhere.  Two more spotlights were knocked from their stands, sent tumbling down stairs.  Glass shattered, wires ripped from sockets, and light fell to shadow.

This was a fight defined by that light and shadow.  Each gunshot a bright point, the soldiers using the light to see, easily ending those things that spent too long in light and outside of cover.

“Suppress!” John shouted, pointing.

Half the soldiers opened fire on stairs, across the expanse between the corner where Horseman had been and the corner where they were arranged.

Ondvarg moved between the bullets.  He snatched up the body of a wolf that was struck across one face, skull shattered.  Ondvarg’s son.

Bending down, he scooped up another, stepped to the side in anticipation of a bullet being fired, then grabbed another.  Three of his fellow wolves in his jaws.  Glamour, necessity, and the fact he was visible only to his own perceptions, and to those of the judges, let him increase his scale.

He tore and gulped down flesh, saturated with glamour.

Ondvarg had three tricks up his sleeve.  This was one.

Soldiers threw out flares.  Each cast a stark red light, with little compromise between the light and the shadow.  Others moved out to the spotlights, lifting up those that were broken but working.  Flashlights illuminated slices of the arena.

Retaking territory from the wolf of the night.

“Breastbiter the Chonk thinks the fancy-ass wolf loses,” Breastbiter pronounced.  Small goblins around him cheered.  He looked around.  “Anyone want to bet, huh?  Not one of you little tits, nah.  Non-goblin!  If you win, if I’m wrong, you get one free hit.  Hit me, anywhere you want, any weapon.  I win, I get the same.”

Smaller goblins clambering over him, medium sized goblins perched on the broken rink exterior, he looked around.  “Any takers?  You sad-ass, small-nippled losers.”

“I’ll take the bet,” Faceful answered.

Breastbiter looked up at the rafters, where Faceful was peering down.

“I’m not very good at hitting.  I can bite but I might take your head off by mistake.”

Breastbiter laughed.  “Deal!  You try that if the fancy-ass wolf wins!”

Every movement of the soldiers was careful.  The sounds Ondvarg made were designed to echo, to put the noise of tearing meat in every ear present.  They inched around the arena, guns ready.

“Face!” Breastbiter called up.

“I’m trying to observe,” Reid Musser said.

“Shut up, I said ‘face’ and you barely have one.  Face!”

“What?” Faceful asked.  His voice was loud.

“Your name.”

“Faceful.”

“Why that?”

“Don’t know.”

“What are you?”

“No idea.”

“Yeah?  Where did you come from?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Faceful replied.

“You don’t know what’s going on?”

“The Alabaster explained a few minutes ago.”

“Why are you even here?”

“Felt like a place I should be.”

“If you’re trying to make it harder for me to hear Ondvarg, it doesn’t really matter!” John called out.

Breastbiter laughed, giving away the ploy.

Substance and sentiment flowed together.  The wolves were of the same get, and glamour helped to remove the divisions.  Fur and flesh mixed like ink in water, inside shadows that helped even more to blur the lines.

The lone wolf was a trope.

The lone wolf was a trap, as the Carmine had found out.

The other wolves had died and Ondvarg had suspected they’d die.

“Body’s gone,” the soldier named Grandfather reported.  “Shot a wolf here.  It was dragged away.”

John put up a hand.  Every soldier stopped moving.  The only sound was the sound of a carnivore eating.

“Could be a trap,” Grandfather said.  “Maybe it’s making the sound but it’s not actually eating.”

“Could be,” John replied, quiet.  He moved his hand ninety degrees.  Every soldier tensed.

John pointed and in the same motion, slapped hand to the front end of his rifle.  Every soldier present opened fire on the same area.  Where the first wolves had fallen.  The ones who’d taken the bait, before being blindsided by Black’s explosion.

There was a fraction of a glimpse of a much larger Ondvarg in the fleeting amount of light provided by by bullets hitting metal.  One who had altered his shape.

A spattering of gunshots chased that figment.  Ribs used his makeshift flamethrower to illuminate the area, and burning fuel painted stairs, providing dull illumination.

The real Ondvarg dropped from the ceiling.  A wolf in shape, with a wolf’s eyes, a wolf’s mouth, fur that curled and coiled, like carved wood, painted in silver and black.  In those curls and coils were other wolves, dead and worked into the fabric of his being.  Teeth bared, eyes opened and in the gloom they watched.

He landed atop the rear of the group.  Ribs was crushed, another two sent tumbling, weapons parting from hands.  Built like a small elephant, but agile, fierce, with none of the lumbering nature to his mass.  Fur that curled cast shadow that coiled and the shadow gripped at legs and weapons.  A claw swept backward, a spike of bone moving like a blade to scythe through Mark and Grandfather.  It came down straight for John.

“Go, wolf!” Faceful boomed, overly loud.  “Rah rah!”

“Bit of dark summer in that bastard, huh?” Breastbiter asked.

“Yes,” Reid said.

“Don’t tell anyone I said it, but you gotta love that shit, even if it’s Fae.  Badass, bristling with teeth, nipples, claws… they know how to party.”

“Who would I tell you said that?” Reid asked.  “Only one of us non-judges or non-helpers here is leaving here alive, and I don’t think any of us care enough about what you’re saying to repeat it.”

“Only one of us is getting out of here alive?” Faceful asked.  “Me?”

Breastbiter laughed.

Ondvarg had turned to a more brutish approach.  This was a prelude to the second trick it had up its sleeve, but laid a foundation for the third.

Ondvarg knew he was going to lose.  He wasn’t here to win, though he’d try.  He was here, in part, to fulfill a narrative purpose.  The Faerie Maricica’s purpose.

Ribs, partially crushed, dragged the tank he’d had at his back around to the side, flopped over, and began to move wood to block one side of it, wedging it-

Ondvarg shifted footing, and in the process, sent the mangled soldier Ribs sliding down one broad two-foot-high, two-feet-deep concrete stair.

John held his rifle out, bracing with all his strength as Ondvarg tried to bring a claw down on top of him.  He was on his back, hands either end of the weapon, knee at the middle, metal bending with the pressure from above.  Miles had a torn twist of metal from the rafters that had come down with Ondvarg, butt end against the ground, braced by his entire body, point in the wolf’s flesh.  It helped to keep the paw from coming down too fast, too hard.

Others emptied bullets into the wolf, for the little good it did.  Miles’ weapon was more effective, but too hard for a man to wield.

Ondvarg lowered jaws toward John’s head.  At the last moment, it was Black who came running in, throwing herself across the stairs, back an inch from John’s nose, lobbing a grenade toward the wolf’s open mouth.  One of the blast dogs, doing her thing.

The ephemeral wolf closed his mouth just in time, jaws snapping shut.  The grenade bounced and landed a few stairs up.

The wolf pulled back, stepping down closer to the rink.  John rolled down stairs.  Black hurled herself up them, grabbing a post that had helped mount a chair, to haul herself up, body atop the grenade.

Ondvarg leaned away from the resulting detonation, that sent the woman’s body rolling down stairs, midsection in tatters.

The wolf was not aware that Ribs was crawling to the tank he’d been planning to use.  Lighter in one hand, shattered arm wrapped around the base of a railing, he waited, half his lower face so melted there were no features, the other half gaping open, surrounded by scar tissue, a leering, near-permanent smile.

John met Ribs’ eyes.  He whistled sharply, bidding Grandfather throw him a weapon.  It also got Ondvarg’s attention.

He circled around, ducking beneath one sweep of the paw with a scythe-like fang on the back.  The fang was part of a row of teeth that ran down the leg, now, so the leg could close up by bringing paw to shoulder, and bite.  Shadow and fur mingled, and Ondvarg lunged through his own mass, flesh rippling, parting, transforming so he could about-face without actually turning around.  John threw himself down stone stairs and piled rubble.

Ondvarg’s foot came down, close enough to Ribs.  Ribs ignited the fuel, and it came out of the canister at two ends.  One down the stairs, the other straight up Ondvarg’s hind left leg.

Breastbiter whooped.  Cagerattler pushed Anthfrgnrgntplath off him, as the small Other tried to climb him for a better view.

Ignited, the wolf reacted, retreating.  The bullets weren’t enough to hurt it, but fire ate at the glamour and his nature as a Fae of dark summer wasn’t enough to help there.  Only half of his parentage came from that court.

The fire spread, and in the midst of it, Ribs and Black both found their feet.  Surrounded by flame, they were only silhouettes, one broken, the other missing a chunk of her middle.  Smoke and the distortion of heat and flame made the images dance, and as they danced, they became more whole.

And Ondvarg retreated to his corner, twisting and shaking until the fire was out.

“What was that?” Angel asked.

“Don’t know,” John said.  “Let’s shoot it to be safe.”

“I didn’t see,” Ribs rasped, as he limped out of open flame, carrying the canister of fuel and slinging it over his shoulder.  He staggered a bit, and Grandfather caught him.  Ribs sat down heavily.

“Should’ve cooked longer, Ribs,” Horseman said.

“I’ll manage.  What did you see?”

“It was antlers,” Grandfather reported.  “Very big antlers.”

“The deer,” John said.  “Flaregun?”

Ribs handed John the gun.

John shot.  A shot that arced over the rink, and over the other barriers between them and Ondvarg, that made getting a shot off too difficult.

Ondvarg swatted at the flare, knocking it into a gap.  It only painted a slice of a picture in its stark red, smoke-heavy light.

Ondvarg, surrounded by wood, tree, and antler.

The second card.

John took and fired more flares.  He aimed them so Ondvarg couldn’t deal with them all.  The picture became more clear.

The deer’s antlers had branched out, a picture painted with glamour.  They had touched concrete and branched down, drinking blood from the edge of the rink.  They had branched up and become tree, the tree’s branches extended up the far corner of the rink, up and across wall, and into roof.

No less than thirty wolves were perched on the branches, posing.

Ondvarg, large, fed on his allies, stood in that flickering, inconsistent red light, his eyes like silver.  His tongue licked at a wound, and pressed it out of existence.  Two female wolves licked at his rear leg, periodically rubbing themselves, snout to tail, against the burned fur and flesh, transferring glamour from themselves to him.

Others picked up and ate the flares, eating the light.  The curtain was drawn closed, and darkness cloaked Ondvarg’s subsequent maneuvers.  The branches and antlers moved, covering more ground, taking more of the arena in the unseen dark.  It was never so much that attention could be paid to it, the fresh and greenest growths vulnerable like a stem of a Prince Rupert’s drop.

“Mark,” John said.  The Dogs of War huddled.  “Is he up?”

“Cut in two,” Grandfather said.  “Close enough to hear.”

“Can you shoot?” John asked the soldier.

“No,” Mark said.  “Not the way you need.”

“Heal.  Horseman?  You’re the next best when it comes to putting a bullet where you want it, out of all the rest of you.”

Fubar snorted.

“I can shoot, but I’ll need to get closer.  You want me to do it?”

“Yes.  Take Doe.  We’ll support.  And Fubar?”

Fubar stared up at John, eyes intense, crouching near Black in the lowest part of the stands, just by the rink, metal and boards on one side, concrete stairs on the other.

“Watch this group while they recover.  We need ’em.  Use your best judgment.”

“Not my strong suit,” Fubar said.

“You’re fast in a crisis.  Your decision making might be lacking in other places-”

“I meant watching and sitting back,” the man replied.  “Fuck you for implying my judgment is anything but perfect.  You want me to fuck your mother?”

“We have no mothers,” Horseman said.

“I’m sure there’s someone out there filled with immeasurable disappointment at how John turned out.  Close enough to being his mom.”

“Stay, do this, be good,” John said.  He signaled the others.

The new cast of wolves weren’t meant to be here, and resembled rumors given life.  Enough forces that mattered had been convinced that there were more wolves in the area than there were, that it had started to count, the foundation laid, the seeds sprouting.  They were weaker than the originals, and would provide less strength should the Ephemeral Alpha consume them, but it was still enough to slow the soldiers down, to make them jump at shadows, and to allow shadows to jump at them, fangs bared.

The Ondvarg attacked.  It moved without sound, across wall, not floor, and flashes of guns revealed it.  In the moment the soldiers saw, they changed position, changed tactics, the bare minimum devoted to managing the incoming tide of wolves that kept coming down from the branches, so the rest could shoot at the great silver wolf.

He crashed through their number.

“Go!” John shouted.

Horseman was nimble, with the best battle sense of the group, possibly excepting Grandfather.  He was the soldier who was too good at killing at too young an age.

Doe went with him.  They moved like they’d known each other forever.  They’d been the first two out of this broader grouping.  She took on the wolves, letting them bite, and he closed the distance, scaled a shattered mass of concrete, and took aim.

“Between the eyes!” John shouted.

Ondvarg moved, quick, to avoid the fatal shot.  For something like the night wolf, the dramatic shot with a meaningful placement would be what counted.  Between the eyes, the heart.

But the bullet was aimed at the deer.  It struck home, and flesh parted, bone shattering.

The true Ephemeral Deer surged forward, breaking free of the hide it had been cloaked in.  Covered in decoratively etched exoskeleton, antlers exaggerated and connected to the walls, ceiling, and floor, it reared, nearly twice the size it had been now that its false skin was shed.  Steam poured from its nostrils, trace blood from the inside of the hide it had been covered in made the bone slick, and it showed sharp teeth as it opened its mouth wide.  A common sort of beast in the Court of Dark Summer.

Wolves howled.  Antlers reached- the spikes erupted from concrete to stab up.

Horseman placed another shot between the eyes.  Bone cracked, cracks spreading to eyes, around the head-

A wolf took the weapon from him.  He drew a handgun, but his arm was seized in a younger wolf’s jaws.

The rest helped.  Doe fought alongside him, but the attack on the deer of dark summer had drawn attention.

“Go, deer, go!” Faceful shouted.

Breastbiter whooped as the soldiers fought.  Methodical, sure, organized, very unlike what the goblin would normally approve of.  He’d picked the winner and he cheered, but in the next hour or two, he could easily be fighting John, doing the opposite.

John wanted desperately to end this fast, but that was its own paradox, because sloppiness could end everything.  He had the upper hand, Ondvarg seemed to know he wouldn’t win this wider contest, but if John made one or two serious mistakes, this round would go to Ondvarg, and the Alabaster would communicate with the Sable and Aurum to decide who was the next closest to the throne.

She could see everything moving.  The Witch Hunters outside.  The sure approach of Maricica and Charles Abrams.  She could see the moving pieces of Ondvarg’s plan.  All of this was in her realm.

It was Fubar who surprised the wolves.  He held a crude contraption with wires in it, given to him by Black, and he’d circled the long way around the ring of concrete steps.  Ondvarg intercepted, before Fubar could bring the device to the Deer.  Teeth seized the soldier who stabbed with his combat knife until his chest was too crushed for his right arm to move.

He dropped the device.  It beeped rapidly.

Ondvarg leaped.

The device erupted into distorted music, tuned to the wrong station.  Not a bomb.  The wolf gave it a sidelong glance, then leaped for Horseman, before the sharpshooter could take the gun from Doe.  Spikes of carved antler speared up from below the pair, separating them, and the gun clattered down stairs.

Horseman was the best shot of the soldiers John had brought, and he was only barely close enough to comfortably take the third shot at the deer’s head.

But that in itself was the ruse.  The Alabaster turned the lion’s share of her attention from the fight to other matters.  It was done.

There were tasks to be done, even in the midst of this.

John was a better shot than even Horseman, now.  He’d known Ondvarg would hear with sharp ears.  He’d seeded the idea.  He’d signaled Fubar, taking the time to tell a man who almost never listened to stay put, and he’d gotten into position.

He fired, and the third bullet hit the deer a third time between the eyes.  Bone shattered, the bullet hit home, and with it, the deceased deer of dark summer sagged hard and fast enough that it tore the glamour away from environment.  The walls cracked, moonlight lanced in, overly bright, and antlers began to fall, a chaotic cascade that erased many of the wolves that they’d brought into this arena.

Ondvarg went after John, who stood his ground.  Each bullet was carefully placed, compared to the hail of shots from all directions that peppered the ephemeral wolf.

John’s bullets mattered.  The fact he stood his ground mattered.  In terms of human physics, the difference between a bullet fired from a gun at a standing position and a gun fired while taking a step back was immaterial.  To a Fae thing like the Ondvarg, it made a difference.

The last shot in John’s handgun was placed between the Ondvarg’s eyes.

It crashed into him, dead before the moment of impact.  He grabbed fur and used the grip to control how he fell.  In the process, he managed his position to plant feet firmly on a concrete step and keep from being dragged down the stairs with a giant wolf’s weight on top of him.

Breastbiter whooped as John stood, taking Grandfather’s help in climbing over Ondvarg’s body.

“We’ll take a moment.  Rest,” the Sable Prince said.

He looked at the Alabaster, and the Alabaster nodded slightly.

That would do.

John was the presumptive candidate.  He’d declared it, and while that made some things harder, it made others easier.  The window of time for a challenge to be made over that fact had passed, clearing the most prominent hurdle.  Now they were able to assist him.

By allowing for brief periods of rest between confrontations, John and his soldiers would be able to fully recuperate between rounds.  That the arena was meant for him, forcing the Ephemeral Alpha to devote time and attention to twisting it back to his favor.  The fact John could call on his allies, when some had none at all.

Faceful extended himself down, swelling large to fill their field of vision as they looked up.

“The wolf died,” Faceful said.

“That’s what happens in a fight to the death,” Reid said.

“Oh,” Faceful said.  “That’s what you meant when you said only one person would leave alive.”

A candidate approached.  The Alabaster’s head turned, she looked past, and she extended awareness.  Lauren Snyder.  The Sable and the Alabaster had already let some helpers in.  It was the Aurum’s turn.  When there was any doubt, they defaulted to an even distribution of labor.  For most things, the demarcations were clear.  In this, she suspected there would be conflict between herself and the Sable, if they were to go by who was most meaningful.  The Aurum was the best to invite her in, and the Sable quietly agreed.  The ties between them made that much clear.

The Aurum went to the door.  The Alabaster went to the dead.  The Sable stayed with the candidates.

The Alabaster bent down over Ondvarg, laying a hand on soft fur.  She stroked the side of his face.

Shushing, she sorted out the spirits that made him, reducing him down to his constituent parts, in everything spiritual and meaningful.  Flesh didn’t matter.  Form didn’t matter.  It was a mess of glamour and spirit, blood and bitterness, and those were each components that had to be sorted out, tangles that had to be combed through, unresolved intent and other things set aside.

These things could be left alone.  The Ondvarg could be left to rot here, pushed into a space between realms when the Arena was returned to what it had once been, if they returned it to what it had once been.  She didn’t wish to lie even in thoughts, to better keep to the seal and draw on its strength.

It was very possible that the contest here would resolve and the arena left as it was, restoring it an unnecessary expenditure of energy, when the rest of the town would follow its suit.

After all, the Ondvarg had his scheme, planned to extend past his death.  Three tricks.  One, to be battle ready, he’d devour his kin and take their glamour and flesh into himself.  They knew, they accepted.  There were points they had bitten soldiers who’d expected a hint of self preservation.  Had circumstances been a little different, it might have let Ondvarg take John’s head.

The true meaning of that trick, however, was to fulfill expectations.  If Ondvarg hadn’t done something that dramatic, then John might have wondered.  John might have thought it was a Fae creature without tricks, so perhaps the trick was coming.

Which it was, but the thought had been intercepted, deflected.

The second trick had been the deer taking over the arena.  Turning monstrous and acting brutish distracted long enough for the deer of dark summer to gain purchase.

It also paved the way for the Ondvarg’s fall.  A believable performance, a believable and literal death, of a magnitude that would be noticed.  When the witch had been able to poke her head in and when they had spectators this time, it was possible for a message to get out, or for a person to try to get in.  He had cracked the side of the building and if the Kennet practitioners and Others fought the Witch Hunters outside, they would see the gap and even glean a hint, or someone among them could.  Their opossum might smell the dark summer and dark fall, gunpowder, and by way of any number of clues, they could correctly conclude the Ondvarg was dead and that John had triumphed.

He had given his life and structured his tactics so this could happen.  A suggestion.

One suggestion to turn thoughts away from a lone ephemeral bird that hadn’t joined the Ondvarg.  One bird that could have a hand in events.  Maricica had bought that bird’s service and the Ondvarg’s sacrifice with promises.  The pups in human skin and their mother would be given shelter and protection if the Faerie succeeded.  She would arrange for them to be raised by humans.  They would survive and find a place in a world that was hostile to the ephemeral beasts, where Faerie would slay them and a hunter might shoot them, where they were drawn to audiences but ill equipped to survive them, whatever realm they dwelt in.

The children would have a chance.  He had recognized his group was doomed in the long run, and he’d died for that.  That, even if it brought things in this region closer to chaos, was respectable and good.

The Alabaster Doe dissolved him to nothing.

There were other tasks, distant from here, that warranted her attention.  A woman named Claudia Vang was unwittingly leaving her body behind to wander other realms while she slept.  An Other that used a human body like a human might use a sockpuppet lurked beneath the magical city she had discovered, gigantic and monstrous even by many Other standards, reaching out to Claudia with a handsome puppet.  Unbeknownst to her, he was sending pets after her, to trace the way back to her body, so he might take the vacant vessel for a puppet he could use in reality.  She was still technically innocent, so there was precedent…

Three times, he’ll be foiled.  The Alabaster made the decision and made it so.

A practitioner named Brandon Parent was exploring the Ruins in the easternmost bounds of her reach, nearly in the Lord of Toronto’s empty domain, if he’d traveled but twenty minutes to the east.  He was fortunate in that.  The Lord of Toronto wasn’t equipped or willing to help with something like this, and had dangerous friends for explorers of the Ruins.  She looked and she found the details.  He’d gone into the Ruins to find traces of memories of a wealthy old acquaintance who could no longer remember the details to get at his own finances, and he’d been found by a shade of an abusive ex-girlfriend instead.  A Wraith grown fat on malevolent things, who had the means to attack his Self directly.  He was balled up, his Self withering and crumpling like flower petals in fire.

Some echoes wandered with the Ruin-winds, and the Alabaster could nudge those winds.  She guided enough specific echoes to him to provide a touch of courage.  Enough to get him halfway.  He would have to get himself the rest of the way, if he had the strength of character.  Brandon was not a good man, and was driven by greed more than a desire to help his friend.  He rightfully dismissed the daughter who would otherwise get the money after the man’s passing as undeserving and selfish, but he was little different.

The motives didn’t matter, but she sent another echo his way.  One that would push him to a crossroads, where he could think harder about what he was doing.

The Aurum’s attention passed over her, heavy.  Two purposes: to let her know Lauren was coming, when she already knew, and to remind her she didn’t have to do this alone.

She’d been doing this for long enough it was automatic.  Her actions were fair, giving choices, not forcing results.

“You know the Sable,” the Aurum Coil told Lauren.

“We met.  We talked.”

“And the Alabaster.”

Lauren ducked her head low.  “I reached out.”

“You could have had sanctuary with me, Lauren Snyder,” the Alabaster told the woman.  Lauren was bald, without eyebrows, but that was the least of the issues she was dealing with.  Dark veins crept through every fold of her skin, her eyes were tired, her bones even more so, even for a young woman of twenty-two.

“No.  I think that would be disastrous.”

“You’ll compete?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

The Sable interjected, noting, “Candidates may call on servants, partners, helpers.  All are being sworn to a degree of secrecy about proceedings.”

“No need,” Lauren Snyder said.  The Alabaster opened the gate for her to enter the rink, and the woman shuffled carefully across the bloody surface.

“This is a fight to the death,” Faceful whispered.  His whisper was still louder than most people shouting.  “Just so you know.”

“I know,” Lauren replied.

The young woman walked over to the throne, accepting the Alabaster’s fond touch of her shoulder as she passed, and went to lean on the throne for support, when her feet slipped.

“Watch out!” the man inside Cagerattler cried out, hands banging against the cage that held him.

It was Reid Musser who caught her around the armpit.

“Thank you,” Lauren said, looking up at the abyss-tainted practitioner’s face.  She used his grip on her armpit and one hand on the arm of the throne to push herself to a shaky standing position, then stood hunched over with both hands on the throne for balance and support.  “I wonder if that would have been the shortest ever attempt at this seat.  Less than two minutes between arriving and dying with my head cracked open.”

“It wouldn’t have been,” the Alabaster replied.

“No.  There have been faster.”

“We begin again soon,” the Aurum Coil told Lauren.  “A moment to rest.”

“If it’s alright,” John said, as he joined them.  His group entered the rink but stood against the very edge.  They’d only partially healed.  “I don’t mind moving along.”

“If the other candidates don’t object?” the Sable asked.

“What’s the order?” Lauren Snyder asked.  “Is there any organization?”

“None but what you decide yourselves.  If there is no consensus, we’ll decide by what fits the flows of spirits and karma best,” the Alabaster told her.  “Participating more will help, but it obviously bears a higher risk that you’ll die.”

“Help how?” Faceful asked.

Cckbtrddshmrgoplath sputtered blood from ear to the bloody rink.

“This isn’t necessarily about fighting for fighting’s sake,” the Aurum Coil answered.  “It’s about proving something to the universe.  If you can prove your worth and character, that will matter as the contest draws to a close.  Judgment, the ability to know who you’re looking at, whether you have all the information or none, the ability to handle crisis.”

We’ve already selected John, he’s strong enough of character and he possesses every quality we’d want for the role.  It is your responsibility to convince the universe that you are more deserving of the throne.  Convince us.

Reid’s breath rasped as he let out a hoarse chuckle.  An eyeball with torn eyelids roved to look at the Aurum Coil.  “Reminds me of my father setting my cousins and I against one another.  All these fancy sounding justifications, but when you get down to it, it’s people being stupid and savage.  We were always that way, it’s just easier to dress it up with fancy ideas than to actually move forward.”

“Yeah!  How screwed up is that?  Fuck the fancy ideas!” Breastbiter declared, “let’s go, stupid and savage, let’s go!  Am I right?  Anyone?  Pelvic bump?  Someone!”

A goblin of Breastbiter’s group reached up.

“You’re too short.  Someone!”

“What’s a pelvic bump?” Faceful asked.

“A fistbump, but groin to groin!  Bring it!  Someone!  Don’t leave me hanging!”

“I don’t have fists, or a pelvis.”

“Jus’ give me a bump!”

Faceful used the corner of his chin to meet Breastbiter’s pelvis.

“You’re a good face.  I’m almost sorry I’ll have to tear your nipples off.”

“I don’t have those either.”

Lauren turned to Reid.  She said, “What you said.  That’s not how I’d expect the Abyss-tainted to talk.”

“Or a Musser,” John Stiles added.  “What changed?”

Reid shrugged.  “Can we move on?”

“Who would step forward?” the Sable Prince asked.

“This guy!” Breastbiter declared.  He jerked a thumb toward himself.  He jerked a second thumb toward Faceful, who was just beside him.  “And this guy!  I’ve gotta demonstrate how I’ll tear his nipples off and eat them!”

“I don’t need a demonstration,” Faceful said.

“You entered this space knowing that something important was happening.  You agreed to abide by the terms of the contest,” the Alabaster told him.

“I did,” Faceful said.  “Did what came naturally to me.”

“Abide,” the Sable said.

“I’ve got to win, right?  That’s all?”

“Fuck yeah, Breastbiter the Chonk and Faceful Swoleface, speedrunning friendship, speedrunning a curbstomp!”

“I’ve never had a friend,” the giant face said.  He turned, and distorted, disappearing.

He’d relocated to the corner of the arena near where confection stands had been.  John’s prior corner to his left, the Ephemeral Alpha’s corner, still littered with antlers, still with a crack in the wall letting moonlight in to his right.

Breastbiter was surrounded by his goblins.  They rubbed him with oil and other fluids until he was glossy.

The Sable nodded.  That served as the starting gun.  Faceful disappeared, and reappeared over Breastbiter, skin stretching from ceiling as he lunged down, mouth open, uneven teeth bared.  He screamed, and the Alabaster had to draw a circle through the blood around them, pushing power into the space to act as a barrier, so those with her wouldn’t be deafened.

Breastbiter caught both ends of the jaw in muscular arms and kept them from closing.

“I get a free hit!” Breastbiter called out.

The face froze.  Mouth held open, he said, “take it.”

“I can’t hear shit!” Breastbiter called out.  “Wink!”

The face winked.

Breastbiter let go, head still between the teeth.  He ducked out, flexed, and then punched Faceful in the eye.  The face retreated, disappearing into the blue-painted steel rafters.

And re-emerged in the stands, upper half of his face and upper teeth extended over concrete stairs.  A virtual wrecking ball tearing through the stands, he rammed through concrete, making it buckle, causing reinforcing beams to tear, as he raced toward Breastbiter, mouth open, one eye closed and bleeding.

Breastbiter caught his upper teeth with both hands, body and legs braced, trying to stop Faceful’s advance.  Lesser goblins leaped up to clamber over the face, stabbing and cutting.

“What is it?” Lauren asked.  She looked at the Alabaster.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“You look for the usual signifiers,” Reid said, his voice hoarse, his breath rasping.  “Monocolored like the Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum, unflinching demeanor… often incarnate, judge, something close to the fundamental workings of the universe.”

“He’s flesh colored.  But I don’t think that counts.”

“It doesn’t,” Reid said.  “But those are the standbys you look for.  Decay and death for the undead, usually hardened and locked in.  Spirits don’t seem to mesh with the environment around them, colors and shading don’t work.  Goblins are… goblins.  Fae are Fae.  Gets more complicated when you get to the goblin and Fae adjacent.  Brownies and such.”

Reid went on.  “Abyssal is easy to spot, there’s a staining, a darkness around the edges.  That staining sets in deep, can look like watercolor.”

Lauren laughed softly, before wincing.

Reid looked down at his hand.  Shoulders drew inward.  He’d forgotten in the moment.

The speculation between the two had halted.  Breastbiter, braced between the wall and the gnashing face, pulled a load of intestines and school supplies out of Faceful’s nostril.

Lauren picked things up again, “He’s not locked to one place.  He can appear and disappear.  My education was limited.  One-note, but the nonsensical part of it, he’s silly, dream-like.  Lost?  Or Anima something?”

“You might be thinking of Anima Hysteria or something like that.  But Mimeisthai would be my guess,” Reid rasped.  “Imitated thing.  Like a fancy, or an urban legend.  Humans draw a lot of stupid things, come up with random ideas.  Emergent rituals- do you know emergent rituals?”

“Easiest to think of them as rituals innocents create by accident.  A large group of civilians repeat the same action or develop a pattern.  Urban legend takes hold and gets cemented in.  Innocents can’t practice but a million innocents doing the same thing can have meaning.  Usually has to be isolated.  City architecture can be that.  Schoolkids take to drawing the same thing, like some angular S, and it picks up steam, is niche enough and popular enough to start appearing in places it wasn’t drawn.  Some say that there’s hundreds that appear every day, but they’re all short-lived, too unintelligent to maintain or conserve power.  On occasion one finds a power source or gets associated with an event like a sensational murder, gets big enough to take over a town, occupy people’s thoughts, twist the aesthetic.  Practitioners like my family have to step in.”

In talking more, Reid was getting past the creak and hoarseness that captured the first and last words of most of his usual sentences.  He almost sounded normal in the midst of the explanation.

“You think a bunch of kids drew the same face over and over again?” Lauren asked.

“I don’t think he’s exactly that.  A Mimeisthai, a practice relevant meme, it’s like that, but focuses in on a singular point.  An accidental ritual that concentrates all power and creates the supporting architecture to create something like… well, that.”

The fighting continued.

“What family are you from?” Reid Musser asked.

“The Snyders.  Didn’t you hear?  Or did you think I might be married?  No.”

“No I- forgot that detail.  My head is full of noise, pain, anger.  Musser.  Reid Musser.”

“So I heard.”

“You live nearby?”

“Not too far away.”

“You didn’t attend the Blue Heron?”

“Family rivalries.  My dad hates Alexander.”

“Ah.  Understandable.”

The fighting continued.  John crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, watching.  The man sighed.

“Abyss, huh?”

“We thought it would help toughen me up.  Can I ask?  Cancer?”

“No.  I wish.”

Breastbiter was flung about thirty feet through the air as the head tossed him with a rolling movement.  He landed in rough rubble, and laughed.  Faceful closed the distance, skin stretching behind him, mouth wide.

A two-foot-tall goblin cut a gash in the corner of Faceful’s forehead.  Breastbiter reached up, grabbed, and pulled it down, tearing about four square feet of skin away from skull.

“Ow!” Faceful shouted.  “Ow!  That hurts!”

He hauled again, tearing the skin away another foot in each direction.

“Owww!  Stop that!”

Faceful shook Breastbiter off.  Then he disappeared.  He reappeared at the far end of the Arena.  “It hurts!  Oh my god!  This hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt!  And you call yourself my friend!  I have blood in my one good eye!  Ow!”

The shout boomed.  Goblins covered their ear.

“Owww!  Owww!”

Reid Musser wasn’t wrong.  One game designer and two different artists had coincidentally released images for a stylized face that resembled one another so closely that audiences were deeply confused about the origin.  The discussions had taken hold in comic communities, in question and answer sessions where many had recognized the face, an impossible question to stump even experts.  Faceful had manifested out of spirit and sentiment as a result.  From there, he’d wandered, biting whatever confronted him, going wherever he felt like he could get the most attention or relevance.  Akin to a leaf flowing downstream.

Leading him here.

“Oww!”

Breastbiter circled around.

Faceful moved, putting himself opposite Breastbiter.  He raised his voice, face distorting, eye squeezing shut and squeezing out the blood that had flowed down from the forehead wound.

“You suck!  Why would you do that!?  What kind of friendship are you speedrunning!?  You’re a bad friend!”

Breastbiter moved around.  Faceful moved up to the ceiling.

“Aaaaaugh!  Owww!”

Breastbiter sat on the ground, looking up.  His goblins began to spread out, gathering at different points around the stands.  Those in the darkness were visible by the way their eyes glowed in the dark.

John Stiles shifted his feet impatiently.

“If they’re not fighting, do they forfeit?” Reid asked.

“They’re fighting,” the Sable said.

“Barely,” John added, before stalking off, walking over to where the soldiers were.

Breastbiter had a piece of concrete rubble. He rolled it between his hands, transferring grime and blood from hand to material, while rounding off the edges.

Faceful screamed, and rocks on the ground rattled.  Concrete dust that had settled on stairs was vibrated enough that it cascaded down to lower stairs.  Metal creaked.  Breastbiter paused in his work to cover his ears with his forearms.  Behind his head, fingers moved, continuing to work.

The screaming tapered off.  Breastbiter breathed on the clump of muck with concrete at the center, warming it, then horked a loogie onto it.

“I’m famous,” Faceful said.

“Never heard of you,” Breastbiter replied.

“I’m supposed to be the biggest in the world.”

“Biggest face?”

“Biggest something.”

“You hit a dead end here, Faceful,” Breastbiter said.  He got to his feet with a grunt.  “Even if you win.  You don’t go from taking the throne to anything bigger.”

“Is the throne at least… close to being the biggest?”

“There’s thousands of guys like that, spread out around the world,” Breastbiter said.

“Then why are you doing this?” Faceful asked.

“Breastbiter the Chonk is going to take the throne, going to get all the girls, guys too, I’m gender indiscriminate and shit.  If they can handle the chonk, I’m down.  Cushy gig.  Gets me clear.”

“Of Gerhild?” John asked, from the rink.

“Not talking to you, soldier boy.  And don’t say her name,” Breastbiter said, looking up.  “Sharing your backstory is a fast way to get yourself killed and shit, didn’t you know?  Narratives and shit.”

He slapped his chest.

“They essentially worked out his,” John said, pointing up at Faceful.

“How!?” Faceful asked.  “I don’t even know where I came from!”

“If they worked it out, I can say.  That shit’s too ugly for this goblin,” Breastbiter said.  “Too mean.  Not fun.”

“You tore part of my face-skin away!” Faceful hollered.  “You’re mean!”

“She’s meaner.  This is the closest to an out I get? I’m taking it.  Now… are you going to come down so I can tear your nipples off, or do I have to show you what that kind of mean looks like?”

“I don’t have any!” the face shouted.

“Not using tools is my thing.  Breastbiter the Chonk is a physical fucking specimen, Faceful,” the goblin said.  “No weapons unless they force the issue, just this body, and a diet of nothing but nips and chest-meat.  Protein, baby.”

“Breasts are fat, you liar!”

“Not the way this Breastbiter eats ’em,” Breastbiter intoned.  “You have until Breastbiter the Chonk finishes tying a bow around this egg here, come bite my head off.  It’ll be better.”

The Sable Prince stepped off the rink, crossing between the fighters, and walked to the back corridor, where the rear door of the building was.

There was a commotion outside.

The Alabaster Doe maintained her awareness of what Breastbiter was doing, as she walked to the front door.  She could see people past the glass, which had been stained to the point that the view through it was nearly impossible, especially from the dark outside.  Smoke blocked the way.

Breastbiter reached into his armpit and pulled out a clump of matted hair that wasn’t his.  It was covered in coagulating blood, a single lock of hair about six inches long.

Much of the reason this town had become important was that a number of groups desiring change had collected here.  It was very likely that one of those two groups would win tonight.

Whatever they changed things to, the people who lived in that end result, however local it might be, would have to face the future, and the worst things the future had to bring.

Breastbiter finished tying his bow.  Faceful did not descend.  Face crumpled, blood in one eye, the other eye bloodshot and swollen, he lingered.

The throne wasn’t for him.  He was unfortunately an entity who had been drawn here because of his nature, nothing else.

Breastbiter flexed, rolled muscles, and adopted a pitcher’s stance, back straight, overly muscular chest thrust forward, hand behind him.

Faceful’s eyes widened.

Breastbiter whipped his arm forward, doubly hard because he stepped forward onto a lower step in the stands.  Faceful moved, appearing twenty feet away from Breastbiter.

Holding the post-pitch posture, Breastbiter chucked the egg he hadn’t thrown into Faceful’s face, underhand.

The contents of the egg broke, smearing Faceful’s cheek.  The concrete of surrounding stairs shattered spontaneously.  Flesh ripped where the bloody, phlegmy contents of the egg had smeared, and muscular goblins began to tear their way out of Faceful’s cheek.

Warren mud, barbed wire, glass, and flaming liquid followed them out.  The goblins were the size of grown men, snarling, bloody, and lightly armed.

Faceful moved to three different locations around the arena in his desperation to avoid the goblins.  He moved higher and swelled in size, tried to translate to an image on the wall, but that in itself nearly ended him- they came out of the wall, tearing bricks away, and when he moved away, reappearing elsewhere, half of his skull was shattered.  Various intestines, a skinned pig, and school supplies slopped out of the wound.  He couldn’t even make noise anymore.  Desperately, he bit here and there.

“I would have liked to have a friendly mutual beating.  I could beat you into a pulp and curbstomp you, you could bite an arm off.  Would’ve been nice,” Breastbiter said.  “Fuck you.  Boob crew, bring me my kit.”

Smaller goblins avoided the new, bigger ones as they hurried to bring his things.

Breastbiter took the black leather bag and opened it, pulled out some fleshy lumps, and walked over to where Faceful was rolling across the stands, blind and pained.

The morsels were tissue from an Other that healed at an accelerated rate, covered in acid.  Breastbiter sucked the acid away, and they began swelling in his hand.

He placed one in cracked bone of the skull, and another at Faceful’s chin.

Flesh grew, swelled, knit to injured tissue.  One lump with bone crusting it, another fleshy and covered in veins.

“If you’re going to be on top, you’ve gotta have a schtick,” Breastbiter said.  There was an open wound in Faceful’s cheek with hands groping up and out, Warren mud and other materials flowing out whenever the head rolled around enough.  Breastbiter stopped the rolling with one foot planted near the wound.  He took hold of the morsels.  “You were cool for a while there.  Then you bitched out.  Made me go that far.”

The face mumbled something.

“They’ll be able to say you died at the hands of Breastbiter the Chonk,” the goblin told Faceful, morose, all humor gone.  “That’s something.”

Hauling on the individual nipples and associated patches of flesh, which were anchored in flesh and bone, foot pressing down, Breastbiter tore Faceful in half, foot crushing bone enough for the divide to be almost clean.  Warren mud sufficient to cover the rink slumped down one side of the arena stands to pile up against the barrier.  Where Black’s explosive had destroyed the metal and wood of the barriers, the mud leaked into the arena itself, mingled with the odd assortments of objects that had spilled out of the Mimeisthai.  A skinned pig flailed amid intestines, barbed wire, and a school globe that showed the locations of various knotted places around the world, instead of actual continents and countries.

Breastbiter stepped on the pig, killing it, on his way back to the rink.  Blood and other fluids dripped from his oiled body.

“How many more of those locks of hair have you got?” John asked.

Breastbiter didn’t answer.

“I’d guess two more,” Reid said.  “If it was the only one, he wouldn’t have used it that early.  And if it’s more than one, it’s usually three.  It’s a good number.”

Breastbiter grunted.  He pulled his shoulder away from a human-sized goblin that reached for it.  The ones that had hatched out of the egg took up a portion of the rink.  Breastbiter tickled the scalp of a smaller goblin that moved to his feet, eyes downcast.

“We’ll take a moment to attend to business outside, then we’ll resume,” the Aurum Coil announced.

The Alabaster Doe opened the door.  As she did, she backed herself with power, brought light from her own sanctuary with her, and pushed her presence out.  It served to block the view of proceedings inside.

Lucy Ellingson and Avery Kelly stopped short, Avery bumping into the barrier that had been created by the light.  The ghoul Chloe shied back until she realized the light didn’t burn her.

The light was impassable, and served to separate the children from the Witch Hunters.

There were less of the Witch Hunters at this side of the building.  One was electrocuted at the side, unconscious but alive, owing to the calculations of Zed Sadler’s technomancy.  They’d barred one entry point to the Arena, separated Witch Hunters from one another, and now fought to delay at this point.

The Sable Prince destroyed the wooden blockade at the other door as he passed through it.

Abraham Musser watched from the roof, his niece beside him, stolen familiars behind him.

Clint Marcum pointed a gun at her head.  He hesitated before pulling the trigger.

“You sense it.  The consequence of killing me unfairly.  The curse would be too big for you to put it into your heart and wring it out.  You’d meet a swift end and I would most likely find my feet again.”

“The Alabaster takes care of the sick, the wounded, the ailing and the cursed.  Seems pretty good as Others go,” Avery Kelly said.  “She’s kinda really good, I think?”

Clint snorted.

The Alabaster looked at Avery Kelly for a long moment.  Then she ended the moment by saying, “If you wish to join the contest, you must enter through those doors.  Once you do, you’re protected from outside forces.”

“What the fuck are you all competing for?” ‘Rocky’ asked.  The Alabaster could see the connection between her and Clint.  Romantic, as far as people as broken as them could truly be ‘romantic’.

“Position.  A throne you can only ever leave by dying, defined by violence and savagery.  I hold one, one is vacant, there are two more.  You would become Other.”

Clint nodded slowly.  “And if we go inside but we don’t play?”

She could sense the Sable at the far end.  The disaster that was unfolding.

“I suppose we’ll see.  Your acquaintances just broke in through the rear door, despite the warnings of my counterpart.”

The young practitioners tensed.  Avery asked, “Did Verona?”

“No.”  She turned to them.  “I came out to tell you this.  You must not bar the way.  I understand your intentions were good, but there must be a clear path to entry for the contestants.”

“Verona might’ve got overzealous,” Lucy said.

“She is telling something approximate to the Sable Prince as we speak here.  Now you know.  Now, will you compete?”

Lucy and Avery shook their heads.

“Clint?  Rocky?  Julio?” she addressed the three Witch Hunters who were still here.

“It’s creepy when they know your name,” Rocky said, staring down the Alabaster.

“No,” Clint said.  “Not playing your shitty games.”

She well and truly believed he was capable of pulling on the trigger, putting a bullet in her, damning himself in the process.  She would probably recover, her entourage of people she’d saved coming to her.  Unless the Witch Hunters killed them too.

Those who joined her entourage knew the risks.  They got a full life, free of whatever ailed them, but they were vulnerable.  They could die.  Other Alabasters might have been aghast at the idea… but a lot of the other Alabasters had died and been skinned.

Sacrifices had to be made.  The world had so little in the way of mercy.  This fight was worse than other contests she’d seen for the Carmine Throne, owing to forces on the outside pressing in.

She turned to go back inside.

“We can’t block the doors, but can we stop them before they get here?” Lucy Ellingson asked.

“Yes.  Until they’re inside.”

“Can we?” Rocky asked, with a mocking tone.  She pulled back the slider on her handgun.

“You may, of course.”

“Can you tell us anything?” Lucy asked.

“I can tell you that your mother is currently safe.  I know you’re worried.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

Clint looked at the girls.  The gun was still held out, but his weapon wasn’t pointing at anyone particular, betraying the lapse in focus.  That would change in an instant, potentially ending a life, if someone tried something.  The Alabaster kept the curtain of light between the pair.

“Really, thank you, but that’s not what I was asking about.  I thought, you know, for all this to go smoothly…?”

Lucy Ellingson trailed off.

“You’re thinking of Charles Abrams.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“Can you help us stop him?” Avery asked.

“The decisions are in his hands and yours.  That is all I will do.  It is his prerogative to try for the throne, and my obligation to facilitate all who would try.  If there is more than one candidate remaining before he arrives, the oathsworn can make his attempt.”

“We’re pretty sure he’d be a disaster,” Lucy said.

“He would,” the Alabaster confirmed.  “Forces are arraigned against him, universal, inner ones, you.  I can only hope the outcome doesn’t favor him.  You could do more than hope if you desired.”

“It feels like we’re losing,” Lucy said, quiet.

“Because you are.  I’ll tell you this.  He’s here.”

“Here here?” Avery Kelly asked, alarmed.

“Steps from the perimeter he helped to build, finding a way in, with the Faerie Maricica and Lis in his company.  In no more than twenty minutes’ time, unless he’s interrupted, I expect he’ll walk through those doors.”

The girls tensed.

“Who is this asshole we’re talking about?” Clint asked.

“I’ll leave it to them to tell you, if they wish.  That said, they may want to hurry off.”

“Where?” Lucy asked.

The Alabaster shook her head.  She turned back to the doors.

“Where!?” Lucy raised her voice.  “You’ll tell us, but you won’t tell us more!?”

“Be ready,” the Alabaster said.  She looked up at Musser.

She was aware enough of what happened in her territory that she knew Musser had said he’d hold back.  He saw no point in crossing Witch Hunters, and he understood that it didn’t fundamentally matter if they entered.  They’d compete or they’d die.  The chances they could materially interfere were negligible.

Musser understood the established systems, even those he wasn’t a part of.

At the same time, he didn’t understand Charles.  Or Kennet.  He didn’t understand what drove them, and he didn’t understand the threat either could pose to existing establishments, potentially good ones, bad ones, or both.

John waited for her as she let herself inside, leaving the practitioners to hurry and strategize.

“Twenty minutes?” John asked.

“Two candidates have been defeated.  Reid Musser, Lauren Snyder, Cagerattler, Breastbiter, Lthsrmzrgrplath and yourself remain.”

“Can you hurry this along?” John asked.

“No.  I understand your intent and I cannot contrive to shape this contest in a way that bars someone entry, but neither will I delay to give him space.  If he is here when the doors open, he can compete.  If your allies outside this building can slow him and his allies down enough that the contest wraps up before he gets here-”

“I get it.  Let’s at least move this along?”

She didn’t refuse him.

Avery Kelly had called her ‘good’, and that wasn’t true.  She wasn’t.  She gave mercy, she cared for the weak, she administered healing, and the Others she managed were often ones that were kinder to humans.  The most violent, vicious, hungry, and ambitious were the province of the other thrones.

She hadn’t mentioned the bird that would matter in a critical moment later.  Doing so would betray Ondvarg’s sacrifice.  She hadn’t told them a specific location, and she hadn’t armed them as she might a hero who came to her.

She had told them just enough to make things fair.  Enough that it was up to them.  She wasn’t good, but she was that, at least.  Fair.

That was the compromise she had to strike here, and one she’d had to strike for centuries now.  She was a paradox in many ways, and this was one of those ways: she was meant to protect, to save, to ward off harm, like that which Charles Abrams represented.  But she was also meant to administer this contest fairly.

John paused as he saw the group of Witch Hunters that had broken in.  They massed at one end of the stands.

Another delay.  John Stiles had two ways to win, and one was to resolve this before Charles got here.  The other was to beat Charles after he’d arrived.

The delay posed by the witch hunters could be critical.

John faced them down, tense, hand a short distance from his gun.

The Kennet Practitioners and Others organized, hurrying, to see if they could find and defeat Charles and his allies.

Charles passed through the perimeter without setting off the alarm, followed by the doppleganger and Faerie.  They talked about the components they needed for their plan.

She stood beside her fellow judges.

“Shall we begin?”

Next Chapter