Playing a Part – 15.8 | Pale

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Sorry mom, Verona thought.

The roof was steep enough she didn’t feel very confident even moving her feet.  Two arms hugged a drain pipe that came straight down from above and disappeared into a hole in the roof.  Her foot inched forward, moving, scraping, until she’d placed it above the pipe, where it couldn’t slide down.  A bit of a foothold.

“Three points of contact!” Avery called out.

“I’d rather have four.  Or twenty!”

“You can’t move with four and twenty is, like, lying down!  And we need to move!”

The Ornithologist.  Maybe fifty feet tall, slender, with a receding hairline, full white beard, with hair and beard that came away in flat locks that resembled feathers.  He looked like an old-school psychologist or something, with old fashioned clothes and a white coat.  He was slow to get his bearings, looking around, but other things moved around him: anatomical drawing images of men, of birds, mostly dissected birds, numbers, math, ratios.  Each of the drawings, numbers, and lines were written in the sky, they moved, a measurement extended to trace a quarter-circle punctuated by ruler-like lines between hip and elbow, then contracted as he lowered his arm.

It didn’t feel like his size was consistent.  Even in ‘his’ reality, there were moments he looked taller, moments he looked smaller.  As if drawn by different artists with the same instructions and reference material but no guidelines on scale.

“Here!” Avery called out.  Avery let herself slide down the roof on hands and feet, sketched running shoes in coffee tones scraping against intricately drawn shingles.

Avery put a hand out, passing Verona the black rope.

“You don’t need it?”

“You need it more.”

Verona huffed out a breath that was half of a laugh, half a sound of dismay.  She looked back at the Ornithologist.

He was getting his bearings.  His head turned, eyes focusing on them.

“Be careful.  The bystanders count for the black rope.  If you try to use it and you’re observed-”

“I fall.”

Avery nodded.

“You don’t have the key?” Verona asked.

“Gave it to Kai.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry.  I’m really sorry, I know we could’ve used it.  I can get us out but I need you to stall.”

“She’s watching,” Verona said.

Avery turned, looking at the window.  It hung in reality, toward the top of the slope.  Too small to move through now, with Thea looking through.

The scene outside shifted, and the buildings around Verona and Avery rustled, some swaying.  Birds took off en masse, and Verona hugged the pipe tighter.  She could remember that fall, when she’d had the wings from the sword of warrior angels.

Drawn clouds of dust rolled off the roof after the shift.

She’s moving.  Maybe with or after the kids.

“She’s probably not close enough to hear but no names.  So she can’t find us later,” Avery whispered.

“Did I?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, shoot.  Was a little freaked.  Am a little freaked.  Not sure what I can do against this guy.”

“Anything helps.  I need time to rig an escape.  Out of sight of her,” Avery whispered, emphasizing the ‘her’.

Verona nodded.

Avery scrambled up the roof.

Verona turned around, then, to free her hand, she put the black rope between her teeth, reached up to the rooftop that the drain pipe came down from, and walked up the slope, hands using the lip of the roof as she would a high railing on a flight of stairs.

Her hand cramped badly.  She hoped it wouldn’t act up.

If it acted up now, when she needed it to climb, she was boned.  They were both boned.

The Ornithologist stepped from the buildings on one side of the street to the rooftops of buildings on the other side of the street.  Peaked roofs became flat to accommodate his feet, chimneys and pipes springing up on either side.  A few birds took off, and he slashed out with a scalpel that manifested in his hand.

Birds that had been in flight became birds mounted upside-down on plaques, pins in them to hold their bellies open, organs absent.  Their heads twitched, and they struggled against the bondage.  The plaques and the birds mounted on them drifted down in slow motion.

“What is he!?” Verona called out.

“I don’t know!”

He didn’t give her the vibe of someone who’d once been human and then got twisted.  If it was the case and he’d left his old self so far behind that he didn’t talk, didn’t have any obvious personality, then he was so far gone it didn’t matter.

He wasn’t visceral, that Blue Heron, educated practitioner type of term for Others rooted in reality.  Many elementals were visceral because the ones that weren’t anchored in something physical didn’t last.  Goblins, bogeymen, humans, all visceral.  But Visceral meant solid shape, unchanging.

Which left two big options.

That he was immaterial, some representation of a concept or idea more than he was physical.  Spirits, echoes, incarnations, all were varying degrees of immaterial.  They didn’t suffer sword and gun wounds like others might.  They didn’t necessarily burn.  They were ideas given form.  Sometimes very loose ideas.  The inconsistent sizing was a good sign for that.

Or that he was a greater power.  Not necessarily a god, but something big on a scale where he made his own rules, had a depression under him that let power pool and concentrate.  Maybe this was a demiurgic domain.  A lot of Others made their own pocket realities.  The confines of a box or other item, a painting in this case, lend itself well for that.

The fluid control he had over things pointed to that.  This wasn’t an accidental sort of control over this realm, because he had so much power that it sort of happened.  This was deliberate, focused, directed.  The shift from bird to plaque wasn’t one step but five all at once.

But, more importantly, he was coming.

The scene shifted, the buildings swaying in a dull rhythm now.  The swaying of architecture got some bells ringing out of time with one another, with a different sync because each bell differed in size.  Thea was running.

She saw the Ornithologist shift his footing, catching himself, kicking over a chimney.

Verona took one more moment to do her best to get a mental snapshot of where things were, then she got moving.  Climbing up, onto a roof, finding a chimney, then… black rope.  Toward the frame.  That little window that was almost out of reach.  Too small to crawl through, still.  She probably couldn’t manipulate it.

She stumbled as she appeared on the far side.

Her bracelet was ticking enough that it was probably burning through power.  The Ornithologist watched her.  As did most of the birds.  Behind the building-tall figure were shifting images that faded in and out, the lines trembling less than they had been.  She saw detailed images of viscera, of flesh pared away from wing to expose bone, blood bleeding out against a nonexistent surface in dark brown coffee colors.  Images in that vein spreaded out from around him to fill the sky.

Whatever that was, she didn’t want him to do it to her or Avery.

She turned toward Avery, and saw her friend in a recess between two buildings, drawing a circle and filling it in.

Verona bent down, pried up a shingle, and then hucked it toward Avery.  At the clatter, Avery turned.

Verona mimed, hand by her mouth, moving like she was shouting without making any sound, still biting the rope.  She pointed at Avery.

Avery shook her head.

Verona nodded.

Trust me, Verona thought.

“Are you actually an idiot!?” Avery called out.  “We had a plan!”

The Ornithologist turned his attention toward Avery.

But that wasn’t the point.  Verona pulled silence runes from her pocket, got a knife from her bag, and then crept toward the frame.

The Ornithologist advanced on Avery now.  Birds took flight, flying in the sky around them.  The Ornithologist glanced at a man on a unicycle with wings on the wheels who was getting too close, and the lines drawn through the air impaled the man.  As they reeled out, ruler-like lines on them, bones, flesh, and organs were pulled out and set at measured distances from one another.  Little numbers appeared above each, noting the dimensions.

The man on the unicycle was disassembled.  The unicycle itself was pulled apart, the individual components arranged against the sky, matching pieces in columns.

The blood was last, dropping down in a vaguely bird-shaped blob.  As measuring lines faded, the individual bits of flesh and bone, bike and wing tumbled out of their holding positions in the sky.  Bells continued to toll madly as the painting they were in was jostled.

There was no way Verona could fight him.  He was too big, too strong, she couldn’t get close, she couldn’t use practice without risking that Thea might peek in and see, figure out Avery and ruin Avery’s stay in Thunder Bay.  Maybe if she used the rasp, it would extend all around him, around his five stories of skin, but there was just as good a chance that he was too big, too important in this place, and that it would backfire.  And it would require her to get close.

Not that that was the highest priority.  Avery wanted to save the kids out there, who Thea was after or who Thea might have already caught.

But if she could do this while sparing Avery that nightmare, let Avery stay in Thunder Bay, safe, with a girl she liked, friends…

Avery was looking at her.

Verona made the motion again.  Hand by her mouth, shouting.

“You’ve got this!” Avery called out.  “Go!”

Verona shook her head.  She made an ‘x’ shape, crossing her arms, pointing at herself.

Avery seemed to get what she wanted to do.  “Hide, hide!  Go!  Good!  Run and hide, there’s a chance!”

What I need is for our captor to think I’m elsewhere.  To not have any good excuse or reason to look inside and check on us.  She can hear us, she can draw her own conclusions…

While I climb this chimney…

Verona’s feet scrabbled for purchase.  The silence rune kept things quiet.  Her breath made no sound, even as she grunted, climbing.

She watched the various entities flying around this place, watched the Ornithologist, judged the rhythm of running footsteps.

The Ornithologist stepped over another street, crossing to the next block of buildings.

Verona lunged.  She couldn’t climb through the ‘window’, the frame of the painting that served as the door between worlds.  But she could reach through.

Knife in hand, she slammed it hard into Thea’s leg.  The back of her thigh.

Thea dropped the painting.  It hit ground, and the entire painted world rattled violently, shingles falling, dust coming down in plumes, tallest buildings and chimneys wobbling.

Another crash followed, as the Ornithologist was jostled as well.  He was mid-step when the painting had been dropped, and he missed his step now.  His leg descended into the void, and his stomach hit the corner of the rooftops he’d been planning to step on.

Verona kept her position on the chimney primarily through her grip on the knife.  The movement of the frame made the perspective on the other side shift wildly, and the fact the knife was partially anchored in flesh meant Verona’s arm was twisted, grip awkward.

Before she reached her limit or sprained something worse than it was already sprained, she tugged, knife tip catching on flesh or pants on the way out, then withdrew.

Still flopped against the buildings, the Ornithologist’s fingers pulled through rooftop, shattering shingles and stonework.  Something reasserted itself and when he was about halfway, the architecture changed to something more solid he could hold onto.  Giving him handholds.

“You stabbed her?” Avery asked.

Verona pulled the black rope out of her mouth, then shouted her response, ”           !”

“What!?”

Verona pulled off the silence rune.  “Worked!  Still think I’m an idiot!?”

“No,” Avery said.

Verona quickly sheathed the blood-slick knife, then leaped down from the chimney, triple-checking before using the black rope.  The bracelet with the cube-shaped beads that rotated against skin when she was being watched was a big help for that, at least, but she didn’t want to to risk that she might start to use the black rope, and one eye or one head might turn her way at the last second.

She hunkered down.  Still had to deal with the guy.  He was climbing up.  Architecture shifted around him.

Thea wasn’t looking.  Verona had spell cards with runes that she’d done up for handling water, as a just-super-maybe-in-case things got bad with the Lord of Thunder Bay.  She quickly modified them.  The elementary rune for water was a triangle with the point aimed at the underline.  The elementary rune for earth was a triangle with the point aimed at the underline, with a line through it.

She crossed through various water runes, finished all the diagrams one by one, then hurled them skyward, letting the wind catch them.

Then, quickly, she sketched up another.  The rune for paper had three clustered circles with a line stabbing upward, unfolding into a square.  She added triangles-

The first paper touched rooftop.  Brickwork cracked.

More triangles-

Two more papers.  Stonework near Verona’s foot cracked.

And a name.  She hurled the card, and the little diagram flared bright.

The paper that had been scattered into the air was painted in a white-tan sort of shade, just slightly off, but as they picked up on the signal, they brightened, turning white against a backdrop of browns, and they were pulled as if by strings.

Even one of the papers by Verona’s foot wasn’t wholly spent, following after.

One notecard flying toward the Ornithologist like an on-target paper airplane.  The rest of the papers following in a loose cloud, flying in parallel.

The paper touched his arm, followed by two of the subordinate cards.  Sketchwork and lines appeared around him, shaky, and then stabbed out, striking the first card off of his lab coat sleeve.

Which cut off the pull.

But cards were still airborne and still generally on target.  Other cards were stuck to his sleeve, and as he moved his hand to adjust his grip and pull himself up, bricks cracked and mortar crumbled.

Lines and measurements appeared around him.  An image of a bird drawn in the air absorbed one card and took the card with it when it faded out of existence.  Some lines extended out like spears, the set measurements all down their length like serrated teeth.

There were about a dozen cards in all and about five of them landed around the rooftop, one or two more doing the work on his sleeve, two more lost in the time Verona had been writing the second card.

He rewrote reality around him, fixing brickwork, replacing it, molding things, letting more architecture and arches spring up.  But a crack snapped into existence between two bits of damaged roof, not helped by his weight and scale, and much of what he was hanging off of broke away in a pyramid-shaped corner of rooftop.

He fell into void, along with that bit of roof.

Verona exhaled.

The entire scene swayed, and Verona worried the Ornithologist was doing something.  But it was Thea.  Looking.

She’d sensed something happen.

Verona stood back, at a distance, looking back at Thea, keeping hands in her pockets, casual, her expression blank.  Avery remained hidden.

The sky cracked open, and blackness began to pour out.  Blackness, when the rest of this world was in shades of brown.

Consolidating into the shape of the Ornithologist.  Filling him in.

He stood there, head hunched forward, face down, and the images came to life in the sky around him.  Darker, angrier.  Bird attacking bird, beheading, birds with wings fluttering and twitching as their guts were extracted, a sketch of a chicken coming to life, a sketched hand hauling out feathers by the fistful while the bird thrashed, silently exclaiming.  The fistfuls of feathers were placed on a scale and the scale tilted, feathers heavier than lead.  Numbers and scribblings filled the sky behind him, filling in a kind of halo, a disc or collage that lived in the space about ten feet behind him.

There was almost a sound to it, pencils scratching, brushes rasping, but times ten thousand, as outlines were filled in with shading, letters penned in, inky colors appended.

Every bird, bird-themed thing, and aviator in the area had landed.  Many cowered or shrank back.  Pigeons with human faces scrunched up their faces and looked away.

He pointed in the direction of Verona and Avery, and every single one took flight, obeying.

“That put him back a bit, at least, but you’re still going to have to watch out!”

“Damn it!” Avery swore.

Etchings of sparrows appeared in an arrangement showing different stages of flight.  Then a ruler.  The ruler became another one of those serrated spears, the various flight states of the sparrow spaced out above it, the spear lancing toward Verona.

She was already focused on the incoming flock of birds, bird people, and aviators, now she had to stop dead in her tracks, letting that line plunge into rooftop and the wood slats beneath.  If she hadn’t stopped, it would have caught her.  Or it would have been close.

He wasn’t trying to close the distance anymore.  He was trying to kill them.

Smaller birds descended on Verona.  The pigeons with faces.  They couldn’t do much more than scratch with talons and gnash teeth, making squealing sounds, so she swatted them out of the air or grabbed them and threw them aside, aiming for spots they wouldn’t be easily able to get back from- a space between two rooftops where she could toss it, kicking it and stepping on it in the same motion to wedge it there.

Someone with what looked like a wicker tractor with propellers elevating it started to descend on a crash course for her.  At the same time, the measuring line with the sparrows in flight above it turned black.

The blackness bled out and the architecture of the roof changed.  Verona turned to reverse course and a wall lunged up in front of her.

“Crap crap crap crap crap-”

Chimney.  A few paces away.  She ran that way.  If she had cover for the black rope-

It plunged out of existence.

“Oh, darn it,” Verona said.

The rooftop under her feet shimmered, details leaking away, making it a featureless plain.

He was using the line to extend power and affect change.  And that airborne tractor was still veering her way.  She braced herself, ready to feint, let it think she was going one way-

Faded gray-black lines marked out furniture, ten feet below.  Verona had to bat away another ineffectual divebomb from a human-faced pigeon.  If that was furniture-

Diagonal lines raced across the surface.  Along with faint images of the tops of buildings, of roof, of clocktower.

A reflection.

Her hand twinged.

She bolted, running on the slightly sloped rooftop, footsteps producing the hollow sound of rapping on a window.

She wasn’t fast, she wasn’t agile, the tractor wasn’t particularly maneuverable, but it didn’t need to be.  She had no cover and the ground was dangerous, now.

“Jump!  Use what I gave you!” Avery shouted.

Just the thought of it made Verona’s stomach lurch.  But there really was no other way.

She leaped from the rooftop as the tractor hit the glass.  Glass shattered, shards flying behind Verona.  And she saw how the Ornithologist looked up, the black lines and images all around him moving in reaction.

Only a glimpse.  She saw nothing else.

Second time I plummet toward my death here, Verona thought.  She twisted her head around and her body partially followed.

Inside a window, a bed.

Barely thinking, she punched out, relocating herself.

And hit the bed with enough force that the legs beneath it gave out.  Breath wheezed out of her chest, as soft as the landing was.

She started to sit up, then coughed.  Onto her feet-

The door to the bedroom opened.  Two women with masquerade masks and wings in place of arms pushed their way in, fixated on Verona, then started striding toward her, one spreading her wings for balance, kicking fiercely, before flapping her wings to catch herself.  Her friend circled around.

Verona stumbled back, toward the window, found the handle for access to the balcony.

The woman kicked at Verona, but the many-layered curtain was heavy enough to absorb the worst of the impact.  Verona was pushed into the glass doors but not hard enough to crack things.  She hit the latch and popped the glass doors open, stepping onto the balcony-

The bracelet went haywire.  There were more figures above and around her, flying in circles.  Pigeons with the face of frowning men, people with wings in various places-

The woman came for Verona, a bodily tackle that shoved her into the little stone railing at the balcony’s edge, nails grabbing at Verona’s shirt and digging into her collarbone.  Verona’s butt pressed hard against the railing, upper body leaning over, Verona teetered, on the verge of falling, her center of balance well over the tipping point.  Only her grip on the woman keeping her from going over.

Verona had to fiercely kick at the woman’s wing to batter it and keep her attacker from leaping over the railing with Verona in tow.  The woman was strong enough but very lightweight and she really didn’t like being kicked.  The grip on Verona’s collar and collarbone tightened.

Figures above her stopped flapping their wings or holding themselves aloft.  One plump man with wings, an overfull mustache and a suit even flapped to drive himself downward.  One wing-tipped shoe extended, ready to kick Verona in the face and drive her off the edge, if it didn’t snap her neck.

Grappling with the woman, Verona tore a dress strap, it didn’t matter.  She jabbed fingers into the woman’s eyes, but fingernails only scraped eyelids.

Finding purchase at the eye sockets, she tore the shiny masquerade mask away from the woman’s face.  She expected to be able to use the metal to batter, cut or wound, but the mask came away as a part of the woman.  Tearing it away was the same as tearing the upper half of the woman’s face off.

The woman’s pained reaction was just enough for Verona to get away with grabbing her neck and hauling herself close, hugging the woman tight to get her head and body out of the way of the man-bird.

She let the woman scream and hold hands to her face, using her for handholds to pull herself forward, get back onto the balcony, and found herself face to face with the other woman, who was kicking off her second heeled shoe.  Both feet were human feet, but had dark brown talons instead of toes.  Like curved knives.  A kick from those could gut Verona.

“Sorry,” Verona said, pulling a card from her pocket.  She threw it at the same time the woman came for another literal flying kick, wings out to guide and stabilize, talons kicking out.

The card touched the woman and activated.  A localized blast of wind knocked the woman away and down at an angle, and the wings didn’t help.  Verona could hear bones crunch.  She barely moved after landing in a heap, wings and feathers twitching.

Birds have thin bones.

The man in the suit was flapping to ascend.  He put a foot on the edge of the balcony railing and then stood there, wrapping his wings around himself.

“Do you talk?” Verona asked.

There was something about how they looked and held themselves, a lack of light in their eyes that had nothing to do with how this world was drawn and colored in brown.

Were they all props?

Snapping and crunching behind Verona made her glance back.  The black measurements were spreading out, and she could see images of mounted birds spreading across the wall, overlapping.

The black took over and the interior of the apartment folded away, lines shifting, textures changing, the space opening up.  The wall just past the door lunged back, and the ceiling rose.  Some bird people out there, staggering or looking bewildered as the wall manifested doors that let it pass them without bowling them over.

Then display cases rose.  A child with a full-face aviator mask with a beak surrounded by four glass walls, her hands going out to the glass before something pulled her against one wall.  Incision lines separated flesh from bone and in about three seconds flat she was dissected into propped-up layers of skin, muscle, bone, with organs at the front.  The eyes moved once, to point forward, then went still.

More display cases captured others, then moved to their spots on either side of the hall.  A man was pulled against stone and flesh crumbled away on contact, the bone sinking into stone to make a fossil.  A heavyset clockwork man with a whole flock of birds in his cage of a belly was speared through the heart with a line, and promptly exploded into his constituent parts and gears.  The birds were set free, scattering, only to be skewered themselves.  Gears, brass mask, and everything else about the man were hauled onto the wall, where they became a vaguely human-shaped art installation, twitching birds mounted on gears.

A slow tide of destruction, dissection, and disassembly that was moving toward Verona.

He can see me?  Even though I’m in here?

There were more outside.

She couldn’t go in without walking into a trap that could spring around her just as easily as one of the local denizens, couldn’t go outside with the flock flapping around out there.

She turned to face the man, who’d stepped down from the balcony railing.  “Come on, dude.  Don’t-”

The steady restructuring of apartment to bird-themed art museum caught the woman Verona had left crumpled and broken on the floor.  The damage healed, limbs straightening, while the woman was dragged back.  When she started moving, her limbs came up off the floor with needles attached to tubes beneath the fingernails.  Fluids were suctioned out of the one hand with enough force that veins stood out against flesh, while other fluids were pumped into the other hand, inflating the limb.

The woman went from multiple broken bones to being drained, and there wasn’t quite a time when she had her full strength.  She staggered, finding her feet, but swayed woozy, getting weaker.  She bumped into the wall and when she stepped away, thicker tubes were worked into the back of her head, chest, and lower back.

The organs were pulled out with enough force that they were pulped.  Her stomach, chest, and face seemed to almost cave in.

She jerked, then went still.  Black lines caught her- wires.  The organs finished getting pulled through, then something was pumped in, some cotton or something that simultaneously cleaned the tubes in passing.

The wires pulled the woman into position, embalmed alive, rigged as a display piece, moving and pulling to position her into an elegant pose, one wing folded in front of her, the other arm extended straight.  The tubes fell away, then retracted to where they had come.  A stuffed display piece.

“If there’s anything to you in there, dude,” Verona told the plump man with the mustache-

Reminds me of Bristow, if Bristow wasn’t short.

“You can’t want this.”

The blackness and the images on the floor were edging toward Verona now.

She tossed out a spell card, and the plump man pulled on the curtain to block it.  The rune ignited, and the curtain was set ablaze.

He stepped closer.

She moved to the side, and noted how the creeping effect that was taking over the space behind her was following her footsteps.

She pulled the entire packet of spell cards out of her pocket, with pen attached to the rubber bands.  She had to flip through while making sure-

He took a few running steps forward, and she leaped onto the broken, ornate bed that was big enough for four people.  Blackness crept up one end of the bed and turned it into display shelves.  He followed, wings extending, and she pushed against the wall to give herself more forward thrust, taking advantage of a moment where his belly extended past the reach of his arms.  A kick to shove him back.  It wasn’t much, but his footing became the very edge of the mattress and the sheets that were slumping off it, and he stumbled down to the ground.

She found the card and finished it.  The rune flared bright.

Blinding the man with the mustache.

She raced past him, looking-

The lines didn’t track her now.

She went to the window, and saw the ‘flock’ out here.

The heavyset man with the mustache was snatched up by the blackness, dragged against the floor to a waiting display case.  She didn’t indulge her curiosity this time.

Pulling the curtain with the burning fabric on the one side around one side of her, between herself and the blinded bird man with the mustache, and the other curtain between herself and the flock outside, she ensconced herself, allowing herself a sliver of a view.  She pulled the black rope from where she was biting into it with her teeth and punched out.

To another balcony, a floor or two up, a good bit over.

Behind her, the other curtains settled into position.  No girl there.  Bird people landed on the balcony and pushed their way inside, before taking off and spreading out.

She used the black rope to relocate again, then again.  Back toward where she’d last seen Avery.

Putting her a floor below the roof, in the literal shadow of the Ornithologist.

A bird flew past the window, a pigeon with the face of a very constipated, balding, fifty year old man.  It saw her.

“Crap.”

Verona used the black rope, punching out to travel to a new spot in an apartment across the gap before the bird could return.  It put her dangerously close to the Ornithologist, but there weren’t a lot of other options.

She hung back, lurking near the window she’d stepped through, keeping an eye out for any denizens of the high-rise store.

The lines and images flooded into the apartment she’d just been in, surged black, and began remodeling it.  Doors and windows disappeared, and the exterior changed to look like a cage with glass paneling.

She wasn’t sure if that would stop the black rope but she wasn’t about to check, and she was pretty sure it was pretty dangerous in there.

She was too far from home to use the shrines, using alchemy was maybe helpful but it would put her at a disadvantage later.  She didn’t want to be out of sorts.

Digging in her bag, she went looking for things.  Avery had taken a bunch of magic items and things with her when she’d left, and Verona wasn’t working with much.

Temporary tattoo.  Taken from Cleo the Witch Hunter.

She slapped it on, then pulled it away.

A bunch of feathers.

She stepped back onto the balcony, then took in the scene, ready to retreat into the store and then black rope to a more secure position if anyone signaled alarm.  A group of kids with bird heads flew by, and they barely paid her any attention.

Her skin prickled around the temporary tat, and she could see it peeling at the edges.

Too much focused, unordinary attention, she thought.  She looked up, then tried to remember how this was meant to go.  She was sweating.  She used her hand to wipe her brow, then drew a line.  She spit in her hand, dipped her finger in that, and used it to draw another line.  Then she reached under her collar to find where fingernails had scratched her, as the masked, bird-armed woman had tackled her.  The flesh was just barely scabbing over, and a rub of the fingers opened the scab, putting crimson on her fingertips.

Blood, sweat, spit.  Three fluids for the Self.  I’m not sure I’m able to produce tears on command, and I’m not going for the other option.

The three lines she’d drawn formed a triangle around the tat.  It stopped prickling as much.

But that’s going to drain my Self as long as it holds, now.  Let’s move.

She hauled curtains off the curtain rod, then used it to cloak herself before using the black rope to up to the rooftop that most of the Ornithologist’s attention was fixed on, secure at a point where two chimneys met in an ‘L’ shape.

She remained behind cover, searching for Avery.  She used her Sight, but it didn’t have its usual effect of simplifying everything.  Brown and white, still.

There was a tree growing out of a rooftop arboretum, and there was a branch jutting out from a point low on the tree.

Some birds landed on the roof, one or two walking right by Verona, not even giving her much of a glance.

I’m one of you, she thought.

But the temporary tattoo only altered the default assumption of her so she’d fit into a group.  She worried it wouldn’t extend to the Ornithologist, who was more of a singular, solo entity.  He used that group, he even apparently used them to track her when it came to using the lines, but they had to signal him, or he suffered for any filters on their vision.

She exhaled, ready to make a move, and in that moment, she swayed, fatigue washing over her.

She slumped down, sitting against the base of the chimneys, instead.

Might be a bit silly to put my Self against the powers of observation of an oversized, pseudo-divine studier of birds.

He was acting scattershot now.  Lines lunged out and punched into random points on buildings all around him, and gradually transformed them.  Chimneys dropped away, slopes became steeper, and other forms of cover or hiding were stripped away in the process of developing a cleaner skyline.

A small rooftop arboretum was one of the targets.  A tree with a branch jutting out from a low point began to disintegrate, falling to pieces, and the low branch broke away.  Avery threw the glamour off and sprinted away.  More lines, images, and measurements lanced down toward her.

“Shit,” Verona whispered.

She couldn’t help but feel like if her dad hadn’t smashed her bag, if she still had that black feather pen that Miss had given her as her gift, she would be able to do something special here.

What would happen if she deliberately screwed up a measurement?  Was there a way to alter a circle, turn something back on this guy?  Or save Avery?

Verona worked her way to her feet, leaning against the chimney, then fell, sprawling, as the chimney began to dissolve.

“Shit shit fuck,” Verona said, as she turned.  Avery still had the giant’s attention, but Verona was exposed now and the second he wasn’t fixated on her, she knew she was boned.

“You’re back!” Avery shouted.

“Please tell me you drew the diagram!”

“He ruined it!” Avery shouted.  She avoided some of the worst of the black stuff, dropped to a crouch for balance as the roof began to cave in and restructure, then sprinted and leaped for the next rooftop.  A gap seemed to mean that the blackness and the guy’s power to manipulate things that came with it wouldn’t easily bleed over from one building to the next.

Ruined it.  Verona’s stomach plummeted.  Their escape route was gone?

A squadron of haphazard ornithopters began to veer toward Avery.

“It’s over there!  I left the worksheet tucked between bricks!  Get it before-”

Avery grunted as she avoided a lancing reach of the black stuff, then she looked up at what was converging on her.  No less than six vehicles, three winged people, and about seven birds.

She threw a coin straight down, tapped her shoes, remaining in place for perilously long before the wind runes on her shoes came to life.

The Ornithologist loomed over the gap, wielding his scalpel, and carved open rooftops, letting flocks of birds out.  A group of kids in baskets with spyglasses were carried aloft by birds with ribbons tied between them and handles.

The giant divine-ish Other smacked one out of the sky after they collided with his shoulder, and the kid was flattened, turned into pages of material.

Verona had to cross a roof to get where she needed to be, and there wasn’t anything for cover to use the black rope on.  So, in a combined effort to stay out of sight, below the Ornithologist’s chin, and to manage the very steep roof, she climbed down from the corner of one rooftop onto the jutting gutter at the rooftop’s edge.  The gutter itself didn’t bear her weight, but a strip of metal at the roof’s edge was bolted in, and that gave her about a quarter of an inch of material to set the very edges of her shoes on.  An endless fall with observing eyes loomed below.

Birds fluttered in every direction.  The tattoo at her arm prickled, now, and she felt that exhaustion settle in deep in her bones.    She couldn’t even bring her right foot past her left foot, because doing so meant moving too far away from the slope.  Her sweater’s material caught on the grit of shingles, each little thread that pulled and popped a threat that something would snag and that she’d pull free with too much force.

Left foot forward a few inches, securing the rightmost edges of her doodled-on Vans on the strip.  Right foot forward a few inches.  The wool plucked and popped as it pulled free.

The metal made a small creaking noise under her weight.

Left foot forward a few inches.  Praying a bird didn’t land on her, that nothing fell down that slope, that the Ornithologist didn’t look down past his beard, that a random black line didn’t plunge into the roof.

Should have used the alchemy, transformed.  Screw everything else.  What am I holding onto?  Dinner with my mom?  With everything on the line?

The glamour at her right arm was abrading.  She would have used it, but she wasn’t sure who she’d even try to fool.

Where had Avery’s diagram been?  Things had moved.  She had only her prior point of reference.  Even the window that Thea could look through had moved, further out of reach now.

She felt so tempted to rush those last five feet.  To leap, to lunge.  Her gut told her to get it over with, to get past the dangerous point where anything, from a movement of the frame to Avery to the Ornithologist to her own glamour failing and reducing the length of a leg at an inopportune time could send her careening over the edge.

Instead, she did it the careful way.  A few inches closer- her fingers reached but fell short of the edge.  Shuffling, sweater catching on the shingles where it poked past her glamour.

Shuffling.

Fingers grazed the rooftop’s edge.

She reached the edge, grasped it, and held it firm, getting her feet over.  The exhaustion pulled at her leg, until she worried she wouldn’t be strong enough to hold on, let alone get her leg in position and leverage herself over.

Something black struck the roof about two feet in front of her.  She hurried to get clear before the changes could start happening.

Where?  It had been in recessed spot, a dip between roofs.

The circle was four fifths done, and the final fifth had been erased by ongoing remodeling.  It also looked like there was a void on the inside, where something was yet to be written.  If the chimney had had the notes in it, they were gone now.  A rope lay at the base of the chimney, and Verona lifted it up to check beneath.  Nothing.

The tattoo prickled as it pulled further away.

Gotta figure this out.

It was an argumentative diagram, calling out to outside forces.  The number 12 was emphasized in roman numerals, the number, and written out at three different points.  Then around the border, there were letters, a phrase yet unfinished in what was supposed to be a connecting circle, two blanks.  Short one or two letter blank, PETHEH, blank, DMANSR, then the first blank again.  There was no sun, moon, or stars, there were no coordinates, nothing to suggest there was a specific outer power, and the contents of the circle were vaguely key shaped, with symbols around the edges.

Key made sense if the plan was to escape.  Then the three symbols.  One like an open umbrella, but with three lines extending sideways to the blank spot.  One with four lines in parallel, one ending in a squiggle, one in a zig-zag, one in a hook.  One with an elongated rectangle, the space filled in.  There was meant to be something at the side of that rectangle, but it was mostly erased- only two lines stuck out at an angle.

What the hell were you doing?

The lines at the edges were heraldic fortification.  Embattled.  The symbols and patterns that looked like they belonged on an old shield or flag were Heraldric practice, suggesting enchantment.  Was she trying to give herself and Verona an effect?  Calling out to a generalized force of twelve to imbue them with something, with this as the set location?

This had to be Path practice stuff, from the Garricks.  The argument, the gap, the vagueness.

No.  This wasn’t for them.

Verona looked back to the base of the damaged chimney.

She placed them in the blank spot.

This was a ritual to quickly create escape ropes.  Like the ones used on the Promenade.  Or that they’d tried to use on the Promenade, before the Wolf had locked them out.  Tug to get yanked out.

Verona hurried to put the ropes into position, coiled in the center, so the lines of the ‘umbrella’ connected.

She knew the starting point now, she knew the desired endpoint.  If the objective was escape, forcing their way free, then what were the symbols.

The rectangle was an open door.  She finished the symbol.  The lines with squiggles and hooks were lockpicks.  The umbrella with lines-

Parachute.

Safety, hacking security, opening a door.

Leaving the phrase.

She paused, considering, then filled in an ‘o’ for the short blank and ‘ange’ for the longer one.  THE HANGED MAN’S ROPE.

She fixed up the border, sorted the ropes so they both touched the base of the door, the base of the lockpicks, and the tethers of the parachute, then paused.

She needed power to make this argument.

“I know you’re strained, I know you don’t have a lot to spare, but I need something from you, Kennet,” she murmured.  “From spirit, from Other, from people above and people beneath, from warren, faerie, and from ruin.  Power this.  I make my request, I bid you-”

The building shuddered.

It looked like the rooftop was starting to disappear, to be replaced with a complex series of archways.

“-Power this.”

The diagram glowed white, in that way that was harsh against her eyes in this sketched out, coffee-painted landscape.

And the Ornithologist noticed.

She snatched up the two ropes.

He stabbed down with the scalpel.  Verona’s first attempt at moving didn’t even work, and she stumble-fell down part of the roof instead of getting clear.

“Nice one!” Avery called out, as she reached the peak of the roof.

“Way harder than you made it out to be!” Verona called back.  She tossed out a spell card, aiming for the diagram circle.  “No paper!”

“Do you even know if this will work!?” Avery asked.

“I sure hope it does!  Did the ropes need to be in a certain configuration?  I coiled them!”

“The papers strongly recommended certain configurations for differing numbers of rope!”

“Well fuck us then, huh!?” Verona asked.

The paper she’d thrown at the diagram circle erupted into fire, burning away the traces of the little diagram.

The scalpel dragged across the roof, and crows surged out, filling the air.

The tattoo gave, and some of those crows turned on her.  Verona pulled it off and stuck it in a pocket.

They had to reunite for Verona to give Avery the rope.  She couldn’t duck behind cover to use the black rope because there were so many eyes on them at this point.

And the black crap was starting to spread and spear out, barring her means of escape.

“Got any of those items to fetch something you want?” Verona asked.  The path between them was too hazardous, there were too many crows, and some of those crows were descending now, picking away at the scraps of glamour.

“No!  Blow dryer to pin something down, stapler to push it away!  Drop the rope and either hold onto something or use it!”

Hold onto something?

Verona could barely see past the crows, and when she could, her focus was on avoiding the ruled lines that were stabbing out of the sky like spears.  Some dipped low, and the first pecks slipped through glamour and past sweater to dig into shoulder.  Verona yelped.

“Three, two, one!” Avery shouted.

“Wait-!”

Something jostled the painting and the frame.  Everything inside was jarred.  The Ornithologist was too well anchored to fall a second time, but he did have to catch himself.

Verona stumbled back and toward the edge, helpless.  She saw Avery running past crows, arms up to shield her face.

Okay, she thought.

She tossed the rope out front, onto the roof.  Crows swooped in to peck at it, trying to grab at it to carry it away.

And then Verona finished falling.

Third time, off the edge of these freaking rooftops.  First time caught with the sword.  Second time with the black rope.

She fell, and she worked to tie the rope around her waist, cinching it tight-

Avery was right after her, trying to pull on the rope and tie it around her waist while crows held onto it at three points.

Let’s hope I did it right.

Verona hauled on the rope.

The world lurched, and she was hauled through air, through sky, and toward the window that was too small for her.

Avery was right behind her.

They stumbled, Verona banging her knee on a pillar or something, just this big stone thing.

Movement in the corner of her eye made her jump.

Snowdrop.  She became human, and then pressed a finger to her lips.  In the gloom, the pale shape of her hand and the dark circles under her eyes were barely visible.

That jostle at the end that shook the frame.  Snow must have done it.  Avery would have asked through her connection, Verona concluded.

“Cherry?” Avery whispered, leaning in closer to Snow.  Snowdrop pushed a hand out to Avery’s mouth, shaking her head.

It felt like it took her eyes a full minute to adjust, even after turning on her Sight to adapt to the gloom.  The space they’d entered was dark, with a skylight overhead.  The difference between that reality they’d occupied and this one was stark enough that nothing felt normal.

There were symbols attached to wriggling things above, around the skylight.  Bulbous, spiky wriggling things.  Verona was put in mind of blowfish or deep sea mines.

The light from the skylight cascaded down into an orrey, a technical model of the solar system, with mirrors instead of sun, moon, and instead of the stars.  Light was refracted down onto a complex, room-consuming diagram with five pedestals of varying height arranged in a three-quarter circle, connected by diagram-like lines that had power wriggling through them in what looked like wriggling red lines in Verona’s Sight.

Feeding into the center.  There, there was a little counter with what looked like an unfinished board game atop it.  The individual bits of wood were laid out, each carved so they interlocked with others.

At the walls of the room were texts, shelves of ingredients and components, and rolls of paper that- Verona poked at one – looked like maps of fantastical places.

And, on one wall, a large vault door.

They were inside the vault.

Verona rubbed around her palm in circular motions, studying everything.

Verona had to turn off her Sight to see proper details, but turning off her Sight meant having to let her eyes adjust again.  No near-nightvision this way.

Avery whispered, “Looks like-”

This time, it was Verona saw movement and clapped a hand over Avery’s mouth, just a second before Snowdrop did.

To her naked eye, the natural patterns and swirls of gloom had started to take shape, drawing images.  Letters and runes.  To her Sight, she could see one of those mines now drifting toward them.

Responding to sound.

Verona started to draw out a silence rune, but then it was Avery’s turn to interrupt, grabbing Verona’s wrist.

The half-finished rune drew its own attention.  Three more of the things.  Throbbing pulsing, glowing from deep in their ‘bellies’.  A more intense response than the whisper had drawn.

She scribbled on the rune until it was thoroughly obscured, then carefully and slowly backed off, letting the wards drift down.  Her calves felt like stone from the exhaustion and running around.

We can’t practice.  We can’t make a sound.

And we’re locked in.

They let the shapes bob down and settle.  Each of the things stopped at varying heights, barely visible without the Sight.  And, Verona realized, with the Sight they started to drift closer.  She hadn’t seen before with the angle.  Or it was more pronounced now that the wardings were ‘live’, or because they were close.

Avery pulled out a spell card, and began penning something down.  Verona frowned, eyeing the wardings.

But they didn’t react.

Avery showed Verona the notecard.  It wasn’t a rune.  Text.  Of course.

Where are the kids?

Verona shrugged.

She showed Snowdrop.

Snowdrop pointed at the pillars.

Verona moved carefully, not wanting to make any more noise.

The first, shortest pillar had the picture mounted on it, the construction of the pillar arranged to hold the frame up and at an angle.

Atop a taller one was something that looked like a floor plan model for some fortune five-hundred company, tiny figures with smooth plastic faces and heads arranged in cubicles, moving around a building.  There were bunk beds, a cafeteria… and a little plastic Kai.

On another was an old horn wrapped in a chain- not a trumpet, but something that looked like it belonged to a goat or some other animal like that.  Verona used her Sight briefly, to get a better sense, and saw a light in a crack, like an eye was peering out.  The iris was shaped like a girl.

She moved out of the way of the ward that had drifted a handspan closer to her when she’d used the Sight.

The fourth pillar held a unicorn figurine that looked like it had been through the wringer, cracks spreading and fanned out beneath the varnish, with whole chunks chipped away or missing.  The horn looked especially jagged.

A quick glance with the Sight suggested it wasn’t ‘live’ like the horn was.  Did that mean it wasn’t occupied?

And the last, tallest pillar put what looked like an octopus skull at the same level as Verona’s head.  The bones of the tentacles draping down and winding around the pillar to about the halfway point.

Octopi didn’t have bones.

She used her Sight, and she could see the thing as if it were alive, white wrappings with white bones beneath.  A red wriggling thing shaped like a girl was caught in the grasp of one tentacle.

Avery showed Verona another card.

Odds that Cherry can get this door open?

Verona frowned and shook her head.

None, Verona thought.

She turned to look at the ward.  Bringing her face closer, using her Sight, she gave herself a glimpse, before turning the Sight off and ducking her head down and away.

Avery’s body language conveyed a very clear ‘what gives?’

The iris of the ‘blowfish’… Verona took a closer look at the pillar, moving around to the side that got the most of the meager light from the skylight above and the orrey’s mirror sun & moon.

She touched her eye, pointing at the ward, then pointed at the pillar.

Same mark, Verona thought.

There was a setup here.  Thea didn’t want her own practice to trigger the Wards, so she’d signed things.  Maybe she’d made it so they wouldn’t activate for her practice.

We need to get out of here.

Verona hurried to try and decipher Thea’s setup.  She moved around the counter, then jumped as something moved.

She and Avery watched from opposite sides of the table as one piece of wood stood on end, then slowly dragged itself over to the broader composition. Wood grain swam like something liquid before resettling, colors changing to be more distinct.  A little less tan and dark brown, a little closer to white and black.

The board game is making itself.

Avery raised a hand, then drew lines in the air.  She circled around the counter, then pointed at a door.

Sealed with a ward, bearing the same mark as the pillars, and mechanically locked too.

So the thing that manages the floating ward-mines is hidden in this cabinet.  She can access it because it’s her, but anyone else is going to run into the ward and the lock.

Avery probably saw the connections.

So the individual pillars held special objects like the painting.  The objects fed power to the center, where they powered the wards that secured the room and leftover power, maybe, went to the board game.

Thea’s own world that she was building.  Harvesting power from similar types of object.

Three kids were apparently in here.  There had been four.  The older brother of one boy.  Where was the fourth?

Verona frowned, pacing, looking at the pillars, rubbing at her hand.  Had one been thrust into the painting with Avery and her?

She examined the octopus skull more quickly, seeing if there was maybe a way to help the little red figure escape-

A spine-tentacle reached out, snaking around her hand.  The lights went out.  Water soaked Verona to the knees.  Her already sore calves immediately tensed at the chilled water.

She moved a foot, testing the ground beneath, and found sucking mud waiting for her, pulling at her shoes, which she’d thankfully laced tight.  With the movement, the surface of the water lit up, motes of bioluminescence flaring to life on the surface and no deeper, provoking some of its neighbors to activate.

Something retreated into the shadows, away from that light.  That something had been the size of a van, skeletal, covered in a thin, transparent membrane.  It barely disturbed the water with its movements.

“Hello!?” a voice shouted into the darkness.

Verona looked.  She could see a disc hanging in the sky, like the moon, but it provided no moonlight.

Verona moved closer to the voice, glancing at the disc only because it was the only thing that was consistent.  With every movement, more things darted back, like they’d been creeping in closer and shied away from being noticed.  The bioluminescence came and went.

The darkness was oppressive, the world barely seeming to exist beyond the five to ten feet that the water lit up around her.  But when she saw the other bioluminescent algae, it seemed to come out of nowhere.  It was like the darkness past about fifteen feet out just got way more solid and oppressive.

Wading in the center of that other pool of glowing water was the younger sister of the boy.

“Oh god, it’s you, oh god,” the girl said.  “I’m so tired, my legs are so sore, it’s so cold.”

Verona didn’t know how to react as the girl closed in, sobbing.  She kind of caught her in a hug, then feebly patted her on the back.

“Ronnie.”

Verona turned.

“The rope.”

“What about her?”

“You should use the escape rope.  We’ll have to hope it works the four times we need it, to get everyone out.”

“Three, I think,” Verona said.

“Three?”

“Four if we include the painting, three if we don’t.  The unicorn wasn’t active.  No glowing lines feeding from it.”

“Ah.  I think that was one of Clem’s.”

Verona nodded.

“There’s a rope?  An escape?” the girl asked.  She clutched at Verona’s sleeve.

The water was washing away glamour.  It had soaked up to Verona’s rear end and was creeping into the wool and the shirt she wore beneath.

“Use the rope,” Avery said.  “Then take it off.  I’ll leave, get your rope, come back in.”

Verona nodded.

She tugged on the rope, and she was pulled out of the water.

She skidded, muddy wet feet sliding on the tiled floor.  She fell, and tried to make as little noise doing so as she could.

The wards didn’t activate at that sound.  Because it was tied to the column?  Exiting?

She untied the rope, waiting as Avery stepped out.  The wet knot was tight, and she had to pry.  Avery wrote a note.

These ropes are supposed to have a destination rope.

Verona shrugged.  Avery wrote more.

They might not hold up.

Verona’s eyes widened.  She looked at the rope, and she could tell how frayed and damaged it was.  Had that been the case before?

She got the knot undone.

She passed the rope to Avery.  Avery reached for the octopus skull, and the spine wrapped around her wrist.

Avery vanished, caught in a moment of shadow, like Verona had blinked, but only with the one third of her eyeballs that were looking at Avery.

She exhaled slowly.

Snowdrop prowled around, then hugged Verona’s arm, watching the skull.

Avery emerged, bringing the girl with.  The lines connecting to that column dimmed.

“Please,” the girl said.  “Please help, please explain, please, what was that?  That was horrifying.”

“Shh!” Avery shushed her.

The wardings activated.

Verona raised a hand, warning.  Avery glanced at her, but backed away- or tried to.  The girl she’d rescued held onto her.

The warding bounced off the kid.

Not activating for the girl, not to sounds, not harming her…

Because these sorts of things needed victims.  Innocent ones, who’d have no idea about the wards and who wouldn’t be able to accomplish much.

Avery started to write.

“Why aren’t you talking?  What is this freaky place?”

Avery showed the girl the card.

“No!  No, don’t leave.  Don’t leave me again.  You left me in the dark there, don’t do that again-”

Avery wrote.

She came back, Verona thought.

“No, please,” the girl said, before starting to sob.  Avery hugged her.

Verona pointed to herself.  Avery frowned.

Verona mimed- tapping Avery’s head, making a book shape-

Avery pushed the notecard into Verona’s chest.  Verona took it, then used her own pen.

You know stuff.  Other ways to get us out?
If the rope breaks or I get stuck…?

She showed Avery.

Avery frowned.

Verona pointed at her own chest, then tapped.

Avery nodded.

One of us has to go and honestly, you’re better at comforting someone like her.

Snowdrop moved over and joined in the hug.  Avery undid the rope, then undid the girl’s.

Verona took one, tied it on, let Avery re-tie it into a specific knot, then wrapped another around her hand.

Horn or the plastic company model?

She reached for the horn, and it rattled as her hand got closer.

“Child.”

Verona stirred.

“Brave, sweet, brilliant child.”

She opened her eyes.

“Oh, heroine to those of us who love you, villain to our enemies.”

Verona’s eyes adjusted.

She was in something that felt like a hospital room, but it wasn’t.  It was expansive, and there were beds, along with constructions running through the center, with about a thousand little drawers.

The people around her were dressed in something that looked a bit like traditional south Asian dress, but bleached out.  Beaded bracelets, necklaces, and decorations had bone in them.

A man with tan skin and pale hair leaned over Verona, hands seizing her firm by the shoulders, and he pressed mouth and nose into her hair, breathing hard.

“Um,” she spoke.  Her voice rasped.

“Shh.”

The man stepped away.  A woman with similar features leaned in doing the same weird hair-sniff thing.  Same seizure of Verona’s shoulders.  Except she rubbed vigorously.

“So thin, heroine.”

“What’s this nonsense?” Verona asked.

“Did you have a good time?” an older man asked.  He wore less layers, skin exposed, and rubbed oil over his hands.

“A good what?”

“You’ve been sick,” the man said.  “Do you remember us?”

“Sorry, but this is a pretty lame attempt at hauling me in.”

“A storytelling sickness.  Parasites play tricks with your mind, they convince you to stay ill, feed them.  They weave narratives.  Convince you you’re someone else, somewhere else.”

Verona gave him a half smile.

“You’re so thin.  We had to search for so long.  You almost walked yourself back to the parasite breeding grounds.”

The windows weren’t glass, but were shuttered, with slats.  One was opened, and the light that came through the window was glaring, too white.  The landscape beyond was white too.

Ridged, impossibly curved.  There were figures scaling some of the easier to traverse parts, way off in the distance.  A wasteland of what looked like bone, if bone rose and fell in waves, all one singular piece.

“I’ve got to find someone,” Verona said.  She swung her legs over the side of the bed, then paused.

Stick thin.

Her hands were the same.

“That’s annoying.”

“Heroine to me and my friends, villain to our enemies, you’ve fought so long and hard,” her ‘father’ said.  “Let us care for you.”

She shook her head.

“A bath in milk?  We can send the boy you like in to wash your back.” her ‘mother’ told her, smiling.

“As fun as that sounds,” Verona croaked, she grunted as she slid feet down to the ground.  The fatigue she felt wasn’t like before.  It was like it went straight to the bone and the bone might crack.  “I’ve got to find that someone.”

“Then let’s go together,” her ‘father’ said.  “Did you know that ancient cultures thought there was meaning to the intricate stories the sicknesses would weave?”

He offered her a supporting arm.

“Tea,” one of the nearly shirtless men told her.  She presumed he was a doctor.  He passed her a cup that felt comfortingly warm to her bony, tired hand.

No hand cramp.

Her ‘parents’ on either side of her, offering gentle support, she walked out into the hallway.  The place was very large and very open, alternately dark and brightly lit by the scouring light blasting in from the windows.

“Has-” she cleared her throat.  “Has anyone come in recently with sleeping sickness?  A girl?”

Her ‘mother’ sounded upbeat as she said, “We were talking to a throuple, earlier.  Their daughter came in weeks ago.  She’s still recovering.  She was as far gone as you.”

“Weeks?  Nobody else?  Not hours ago?”

“No.”  Her ‘mother’ rubbed her back.  It felt good when she felt this tired and cold.

Trap.  Trick.  Couldn’t fall victim to something as stupid as simple touch.

“I’d like to see her.”

“Yes.  We’d like to see them,” her ‘father’ said.  “We became fast allies, bonding over our similar stories.  As their daughter recovers, we had growing hope you would too.”

She passed a mirror, which was hammer-beaten silver, and the vaguely distorted face on the other side was not her own.  The hair was long, near-white, the skin a dark brown.  She was gaunt.  Starved.

That’s not me.  If you’re going to act like a trap to suck me in with a crappy story… let me keep my face.  I know a bunch of girls hate their bodies and their faces and everything but I’m grateful for what I got, I like my hair and my clothes and my body.  I like being petite, I know Jeremy likes that stuff too.

Except my hand…

She looked at the one hand, that wasn’t cramping, hadn’t even twinged.  She rubbed her thumb across the palm in a circular motion.

The sheer relief at not having to worry about it really bothered her.  She’d thought she was mostly okay with it, when it wasn’t cramping up hardcore, but the sheer degree of relief of that tension and low-level pain made it abundantly clear just how much it really had been eating at her.

A stupid, stupid injury that hadn’t even accomplished anything.  Hadn’t saved anyone.

She reached for the sash at her waist.  Did this place disguise the rope?  Then the other rope-

She had it wrapped around a wrist.

“You’ll have to tell us your story later.  The journey, the experience…”

“I think I’ll be leaving pretty soon.”

“At least eat and bathe before you let the parasites take hold again,” her ‘father’ said, chuckling.  “I know it’s a tough journey back to us.  But there’s time.  You can take a year.  Find your way back to us.”

“Here,” her ‘mother’ told her.

Both her ‘parents’ cleared their throats as they stopped in the doorway, heads dipped.  A light push at the back of Verona’s head made her dip her head too.

“Lovely allies, raise your heads.  Come in,” a man greeted them.  He wore lots of silver. “Don’t darken the doorway.”

They ventured into the room.  Verona saw a girl sitting on a bed with a little boy, the two of them stringing jewelry.

“It’s been weeks for you?” Verona asked.

The girl looked up, startled.

“Less than an hour back where we belong.”

“Oh,” the girl said.

“The same family of parasites, like we thought.  A shared story,” the man with the silver ornamentation said.

“That makes our job easier.  What we’ve heard from your daughter will help us understand ours.”

“A horrible story,” the girl on the bed said, dropping her eyes to the ground.  “One that promised escape to a world where I could fly, then stole it away.  Villains.”

“Sorry for my part in that,” Verona told her.  “I wish… I wish that whole arrangement had been legit.”

“I’d like to stay,” the girl said, eyes on the beads.  “I know it probably isn’t real… I don’t want to go.”

“That’s the trap, I think.”

“I don’t care if it’s a trap.”

Verona wasn’t sure what to say.

The silence lingered.

“What’s your name?”

“Margot.”

“I’m Verona.”

“Everything’s easier here.  Simpler,” Margot said.  “You don’t know what you’d be sending me back to.”

“If you mean Thea, the woman-”

“Not that.  Not the woman with the painting about flying.  Other stuff.”

Verona looked out the window at the barren wasteland that was rippling, interconnected bone or horn.

“There was something with a red eye,” Verona said.

“In the dream?” her ‘father’ asked.

“In the horn that hosts this world.  Some kind of beast, I think.”

“That might be your old memories coming back to you.  There are things like that.  We sacrifice to it once every five years.”

“A person?” Verona asked.

“Yes.  Volunteers.  From those of appropriate age,” her ‘father’ replied.

“Okay,” she murmured, rubbing at her hand unnecessarily.  “Give us a moment?”

“Just a little while.  You should eat, bathe.  You’ve only just come back to us.”

Verona shrugged.

She watched her ‘father’ walk off.

“Probably how it gets you,” Verona told Margot, without taking her eyes off her supposed family of this world.  “Maybe it’s being voluntold.  Maybe the self-selection process is rigged.  Maybe you get brainwashed, everything else perfect, or things contrive-”

“I don’t care.”  Margot’s fingers wound around the cordage and beads she was stringing with her little brother.

“That you might get eaten?”

“Five years of this sounds good,” was the response.  The girl didn’t look up from the beadwork.  “I have a little brother here.”

Verona sighed.  “I don’t want to pry.  I’ve got my own crap.  But is there any way you’d reconsider?  Because that beast might eat you, it’d chew you up for power, after pampering you, then that power would go to that woman that’s trying to capture kids and-”

“Something with souls.”

“Yeah.  Snipping up people’s souls for materials to make another fake little world.  One of her own to play god in.  It’d make her stronger, if this place got to eat you.”

“Don’t tell me that.”

“And honestly, while this is acting as a power source, like a little furnace using you as the coal, it’s harder for us to save your friends.”

Margot shook her head.

Verona looked back at the parents, who’d retreated to talk.  Her ‘father’ smiled at her.

She looked down at the cup of tea and decided it was best not to drink.  She set it by the window.

“Then I guess I have to,” Margot said, not looking up.  “Don’t I?  If others would get hurt?”

“Is it anything I can help with?  Whatever was making life hard?”

“In that reality, my brother did something- he went to jail.  Everyone’s so angry.  So angry.  But he’s not around to be angry at, so they’re angry at each other.  My parents don’t stop screaming at each other, don’t stop crying.  Everyone hates them.  They’re angry at me, they hate me.  Everyone.”

“Why?  What could you have done?  You’re like, what, eleven?”

“But I look like him.  I- before I understood what he did, I tried defending him.  Online, in person.  I shouldn’t have.  People from my brother’s grade copied it and put it all over the place.  So now everyone hates me.  We moved, and- word got out.  They found me, the story, the angryness, it followed us all.  Every time I go online, they- there’s so much hate.  I can’t breathe.  I never feel safe.  It suffocates.”

“Okay,” Verona said.

“But I can’t stay.”

“She’d use the power from eating you to hurt others.”

The girl nodded.

“I wish your problem was one I could easily help with.”

“Kai and the others were from my old school.  They backed me up, but you can tell they’re thinking about it, because it’s happening to them too, for being my friend.  They’re my friends and they’re loyal but it’s not enough.  Not compared to hundreds of people acting horrible.  Not compared to thousands online.  Thousands, a constant stream of hate, people calling me an idiot.  It doesn’t matter if I apologize.  I apparently said all the wrong things and that can never be taken back.  Anything I say, they pick it apart, they twist it around, they say I’m faking, or-”

Margot’s voice was picking up in pitch, words coming faster.

Verona glanced out the window.  “I can help with the online part, maybe.  A friend of mine might be able to.  I think he’s between projects, he’s got a good heart.  I’ll- I’ll find a way to pay him back, if he agrees.”

“You can’t take back anything once you’ve put it out there.”

“You’re a kid.  You should be able to.  I’ll ask my friend.  We’ll see, okay?”

“I guess it must seem so dumb to you that I’m worried about all of this when… magic paintings and stuff.”

“No, not dumb.  It’s worth saying, if there’s any way you can convince yourself that this is fake, it’ll help you out.”

“Weeks with this- this quiet, it’s helped me get pretty good at lying to myself.  I can, I think.”

“Depending on what happens when I yank you back, if I can yank you back, that might get harder.  We’ll need you to do the legwork on getting us out.  My friend and I can’t talk in that room.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you might when you get there,” Verona said.  She took the sash from her own waist and limped over to the girl.  “I’ll give you the more intact rope.  I hope.  If I don’t follow in a couple minutes, get my friend to come for me, somehow.”

Margot nodded.

Verona finished tying the belt in the knot Avery had done, then she gave it a fierce tug.

The girl was ripped from existence in the bleached hotel with its herbal cabinets and battered silver mirrors.

Verona flexed her left hand, stretching it out, closing it, enjoying the lack of twinges.  Then she sat on the bed.

Two weeks here was less than an hour back there.

“Did she escape us?” Verona’s ‘father’ asked her.  “We were so busy talking.”

“More or less.”

“Ah, little challenger, devious little warrior,” he said.  He rubbed her back, standing by the bed.  She rocked a little with the steady motion.  “I’m so glad you’re well.  We want to hear everything.”

“I think I’d like- if it’s okay, I want to sit here quietly for a bit.  Think about things.”

“Let me bring you food.”

“I don’t want to give this place that claim on me.”

“At least have dinner with us and our new allies.  Your friend, when she comes back.  We’ll talk, all together.  I know it’s a lot, to unravel such intricate storytelling from your mind and remember you belong here, but talking will help with that.”

“How long until dinner?”

“Hours.”

“Just let me sit for a few hours then?” she asked.  “Then I’ll go.”

He leaned in, lower face buried in her hair.  Some gesture of affection.

Then he left her be.

She sat on the bed, doing math in her head for about five or ten minutes before re-confirming to herself that she could spare a few hours.  Then she sat for a while, staring out the window.

In the last few hours, she worked through her mental model of the vault room, of the pedestals, of where things were and how it worked.

She heard her ‘father’ approach, sighed, and then tied the rope belt on.  She hoped it wouldn’t tear or break.

She flexed her left hand, free of pain, then hauled on the belt.

Pants wet, the entirety of her a bit cold, everything dark, everything hostile.

Avery looked at her, an arm around Snowdrop.  Margot and the little sister were sitting by the vault door.  Margot was consoling her friend.

Avery came to take the belt, while Verona looked upward.

Skylight, sure.  Why?

And what the heck was that miniature solar system with mirrors?

Avery pointed at herself, then the little company.

Verona nodded.

Snowdrop and Avery went in together.  In an eyeblink, both were gone.

She felt tranquil, after the hours spent sitting and thinking.  And a bit heartbroken, somehow.

She rubbed at her palm.

Inside the model, there was a little plastic Avery and a little plastic opossum.

A computer at the top of the model burst into flame.  Then more things did.

Is that on purpose?

After a minute, just when Verona was about to take action, the model pushed Avery and Snowdrop out.  Kai immediately followed.

The last active magic prison was depowered, and the power flowing to the center of the room faded.

“Test,” Avery whispered, even as Verona shook her head.

Sure enough, the Wards were still live.  Avery had to back up.

Their various noises and minor uses of practice had brought a lot of wards down.  The ground level was hazardous now.

But in a way, that was convenient.

Verona held up a finger, then approached the shelves.  She checked that touching the shelves didn’t provoke anything, then began to climb them, with tired, cold legs in damp jeans.

Climbing the shelves put her close to some wards, but it also put her close to the orrey.  She observed it from a distance, crawled around the top shelves of the circular room to view it from another angle, then reached out-

A ward shifted, the rune taking shape out of the gloom as it moved toward her.

Protected.

The sun, moon, and stars were often coordinates for diagrams and rituals.  That got into celestial practices and the more intricate timings, processes, and programming language type stuff that went into the really advanced magic circles.  The coordinates would let a diagram point to a very specific time, place, and effect, for summoning specific, dangerous things, or referencing other realities.

Verona and her friends had a lot of power, but they hadn’t dug into that kind of complex diagramming much.  The Alcazar had been the closest thing and Zed had handled a lot of the legwork there.

The orrey felt like a diagram in brass, wire, and mirrors.  A central fixture absorbed the light from above, that light was refracted down.  The goal wasn’t to give coordinates to something predetermined.  The goal was to set the coordinates.

To actually take this place that Thea was building and put it on the map.  The fact that the orrey could ‘see’ the real noontime sun, nighttime moon and stars mattered.  Later, it would let other practices use celestial runes and settings to target the world.  Thea could hitch other practices to it or build doors.

She knew Thea could come storming in at any moment, but if she could figure this out…

This took power and time.  The power was the interesting bit.

She glanced down the ten or fifteen feet from the top shelf to the ground way down below, then motioned for people to move.  Avery and Snowdrop were more interested in listening, and made the effort to get the kids to listen.

Getting out the dropped knife, still slick with Thea’s blood, Verona cut through the first of the wires that held the orrey up.

There was barely any resistance, with the enchanted knife.  A matched knife to the one that Avery had given to the local Lord.  Or had been supposed to, Verona wasn’t sure how that had gone.

The orrey dropped a few feet.

Verona cut another, quick.

Let the blood on this knife work to make this count as Thea doing the job.  Wards don’t work against Thea.

It dropped another short distance.

She pointed at Kai, motioning for Avery to stand back.

Kai climbed up onto the counter that had the chesslike board game in process on it, then hopped up, grabbing one arm of the orrey.  Verona nodded.  She counted on her fingers-

Pausing, as her one hand cramped some.

She started over.  Counting down from five.  Then she cut the last remaining wire.

The two other girls helped, catching it so it didn’t make too much noise.

Verona started climbing down.  She paused midway to point, gesturing, while urging Avery to hang back.

In her haste and with the distraction of watching the kids fiddle with the development, she almost stuck her foot into one of the wards.

She made her way down, then watched from the edge of the room as they pried a little door open.

Thea’s measures to keep her wards from blowing up herself or wasting potential victims meant the wards weren’t activating as a group of those potential victims opened up the orrey.

Inside was a glass container with what looked like a small star in it.

“And… we’re good,” Verona said.

“We can talk?” Avery asked.

“And other stuff,” Verona said, noting that the wards were going dark.

Verona reached for one of the objects, ready to lift the horn from its pedestal.

She saw the wards start to illuminate.

“Emergency power,” she said, dropping her hand.  Whatever else was there, it might be inside the cabinet.  But Thea wasn’t going to leave her items nearly that unprotected, it seemed.

“You okay with setting her back a few years in her process?” Verona asked.

“Maybe there’s time to unravel her or interfere with what she’s doing, if she has to rebuild.  What did you even do to break the… security?”

“That’s the battery,” Verona said.  “And… I’ll happily take that.”

She took the jar from Kai and put it in her bag.

“Lucy said you’d been stepping it up back home,” Avery said.  “If this is you tired, I’m a little spooked to think about what you’re like when you’re alert.”

Verona cackled lightly.

“I think I can get the vault door open,” Avery said.  “I’m a bit worried about what she might have rigged to it.  give me extra eyes?”

Verona nodded.

Avery had more stuff that the Garricks had taught her.  Some of it was stuff for puzzle solving, and a locked vault was a pretty serious puzzle.

Verona passed a slip of paper to each of the three kids, holding a finger to her lips.  Another paper went on the door.

There was no sound as it opened.  Verona watched with her Sight None of them made a peep as they escaped the interior of the sealed room.

She hoped the kids were young enough that she wasn’t having to take responsibility for them seeing this.  Or that if they were Aware, that Thea was taking that responsibility.  With luck they’d trick themselves into thinking the silence was just all of them doing their best to be quiet.

They exited into what looked like a house, but was maybe a very large apartment.  Tall windows with wrought framing lined one wall of a study.  Further down, Verona could see a dining room and kitchen.  Everything looked fancy and old fashioned.  Medieval old fashioned more than Victorian or whatever.  Lots of thick, dark wood polished to the point that it had amber hues, with legs or shelving mounts in copper that had intentionally been allowed to go blue-green.

Avery motioned for the kids to go to the front door.

Verona edged closer to the faint voice she heard.  She was backed by Snowdrop, then Avery.

“I want your support at the council meeting,” Thea said.

There was a pause.

“Witch Hunters, if I had to guess.  Montreal’s sort.  Some limited magic items.  A key they picked to foil me.  But when they came for me, they stabbed me.  Hugh- Hugh, stop blustering and listen.  I want your support.  Draw the attention, don’t let them ask too many questions.”

Thea’s footsteps were audible as she approached.

They retreated a bit, ready to bolt.  Their glamours were in tatters, so being seen would be a danger.

“Musser was meant to have the arrangement with the head Witch Hunter.”

Avery and Verona met one another’s eyes.

“It should include Montreal.  They’re allies, aren’t they?  Trust me, Hugh, you don’t want me to start playing politics with this.  When I get involved in politics, I take people’s heads.  It’s why I stay away from the council.  Odis recognized that early.  So pass that on.  Tell Musser he doesn’t want me to get political.  He told me I didn’t need to worry about them, let’s hold him to that.”

Verona touched Avery’s arm.

Avery held on, holding up one finger.

“No.  I was considering it, but if I say yes or no is going to depend on how good his response to this is.  And if it turns out this was his machinations-”

Thea was cut off.

“I hope not.  I may be new, but I bring a lot to this.  He made his pitch, now it’s his time to prove he can follow through on it.  That’s all I’m saying.  He needs to look into the Witch Hunters.  I’ll move my focus to looking at other possibilities.”

Verona glanced at Avery.  Avery didn’t really move.

“Have him ask.  They should know who was in the area,” Thea said.  Her shoes were loud on the wood floor.

“In a bit.  One of the boys escaped while I was hobbled, he followed me to my apartment on his bike, I let him.  I’ll need to use some of Odis’ tricks, see if I can’t lure him in.  A bauble, a gimcrack, a ring on his phone with a cryptic message in his friends’ voices.  He should come.”

Avery nodded, then turned, pushing on Verona’s arm.

It sucked to leave the four magical locations here, but they were too secure.  Books were protected too…

They had to leave it like it was.  With a bit more information, and one really good prize.

Power.  A jar of stored power meant to help make and refine a little universe.

“I screwed up,” Verona said.

They were sitting on the steps that led up to the stairwell and Avery’s family’s apartment.  Verona had her bags with her.

“Screwed up how?”

“I came to help you.  I was supposed to help you build alliances.  But things went tits up, didn’t they?  Thea has to at least suspect you.”

“I’ll manage,” Avery said.

“Things are going to be way more tense.”

“I’ll manage, seriously.  This was good.  You got the power?”

Verona nodded.  “Feels bad though.  Me coming and leaving having served my goals better than yours.”

“No, Ronnie.  We saved four kids, that was my priority.  Got three out of their own little prison worlds, got the fourth before he could be baited in to try and rescue them.  And we figured out she’s got some relationship to Musser.”

“Sounded like he made a pitch and she hasn’t accepted.”

“I can work with that,” Avery said.

Verona nodded.  Her bag was heavy at her back with the jar inside.

“Is it enough to do all the things we want to do?” Avery asked.

In other words, is the power in this jar enough to do a number on the Carmine Exile?

Verona’s job out of the three of them.  Figuring out how to stop him.

Verona shook her head.  “Not on its own.  But it’s a lot of juice that might power a lot of things we want to do.”

“Okay.”

Maybe if we find an explicit weak spot and then use this sort of power to drive something into that weak spot hard enough…

But it’s probably not that easy.  Still, it helps.

“I bet Thea’s going to be at that council meeting, giving me the stink-eye.”

“Call after?  I’ll worry.”

Avery nodded.

Verona sighed, stood, and stretched.  “Okay, Cherry.  If you’re not staying, I should pack you up.”

“-an’ milk!” Cherry exclaimed.  “From big giant boobs!”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.

“We’re going to make a Path!  Like the soupsleeves woman!” Cherrypop exclaimed.  “The opossum said we can do it now!”

“Is that the plan?” Avery asked.

“It’s going to be the best, we’re going to have milk and boobs and screaming!” Cherrypop bounced on the spot, punching at the air.  “We’ll have jokes!  The funniest!  Imagine some big fancy pants guy shows up and he has to do riddles and the answer to every one is his mom’s hairy balls!  Bahahahaha!”

Cherry laughed at her own joke.  Snowdrop turned into an opossum and bowled her over, gnawing for her head.

“Cherry,” Avery said.  “You can’t go sitting around on a rock all the time if you’re going to help with that stuff.  You have to learn, and stay strong.  You can’t let Gashwad take advantage of you.”

“Ey!  I take advantage of myself!”

The car pulled up.

“Come on, fork form,” Verona said.  “Maybe Lucy can bring you when she visits.”

Cherrypop obliged.

“She’s so much better when she’s with Snow,” Avery said.  “Happier, even less mean.”

“Want to keep her?” Verona asked, picking up her bag.  She pulled it over her shoulder and rubbed at her palm.

“Not with certain goblin exterminators around.  They have traps.”

“Bit of an incentive to deal with that, huh?”

“I’m not a ‘dealing with’ type,” Avery said.  She held out her arms for a hug.

“I hope you don’t have to learn,” Verona said.  She hugged Avery, catching her little clothes bag before it could slide off her shoulder, where her backpack consumed most of the real estate already.  “But I think you might.”

Avery sighed.

“Be safe, be careful, stay in touch?”

“We were supposed to have a long heart to heart.  It happens a lot when we spend time together, you know?  Where you vent, you tell me stuff you can’t tell Lucy?  We kinda skipped that.”

“We sorta had one.”

“A bit, but… was that really it?” Avery asked.  “I don’t feel like that was it.”

“Nah.  Other stuff got in the way.”

“We could try it on video call.”

“I’m doing what I gotta, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

“Already kept my mom waiting for super long with delays and stuff already,” Verona said.  “I should go.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.  Bye opossum.”

Snowdrop, hidden in the hedge, raised a paw.

Verona hurried over to her mom, and tackled her with a hug.

“Are you okay?  You look wrung out.”

“I am wrung out.  I didn’t sleep, my hand acted up.”

“Is it okay now?”

Verona shrugged.

She put her bag in the back seat.  She glanced over at her mom, and decided to get it out of the way.  “Are you mad?  That I delayed and canceled?”

“Should I be?”

Verona shook her head.

“Then I’m not.  Come on.  You keep saying things will break down and I’m worried you’re right.”

“Oh no,” Verona said, as she got settled in the passenger seat, backpack in her lap, a little store of power contained there.  “Whatever will be do?  I’d have to miss school, and we’d get to spend time together.”

“Ahhhh, is that the plan?  That you manipulate me into letting you skip?”

“We could make it the plan.  Because the alternative is the car breaks down or there’s something horrible that happens to the road…”

“When you talk that way, I can’t help but worry that you’ve sabotaged my car or-”

“Or planted dynamite?”

“Or something.  It’s fishy.”

“I’m fishy.  Keeping secrets.”

They pulled away from the street.  Avery waved and Verona waved back, until they were all the way out of sight.

Avery sent Verona a text, a deer with wobbly arms waving.  Verona went looking for an appropriate cat picture.

“Was it a good visit?”

“Some.  It’s not enough.”

“No.  I don’t suppose you moving here would be?  You’d be leaving Lucy.”

Verona sighed.

“I’m sorry it’s hard.”

“Yeah.  We need her back.  We need Avery.  It’s too hard without her.”

I hope Lucy’s managing okay.

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