Author: Wildbow

Hard Pass – 22.z | Pale

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“Not quite,” the Aurum said, from the far side of the trees, his voice echoing through.

Avery took deep breaths.  She was aware that she was badly hurt, and a deep ache was taking hold in her hip, pulsing with a beat deeper and slower than her heartbeat, in a way that felt like it was trying to pull her heartbeat into its rhythm.

It felt like her breaths weren’t doing as much as they should.  Like her entire body thought she was holding her breath when she wasn’t.  That creeping, delirious feeling, the fuzziness.

She thought of holding her breath to beat Declan at being still for the statue game, when their parents got them playing that to make them be still for a little while.

Thoughts of her family darted through her mind.  It felt like there should be something to grab onto, something she should be able to think of, a name to call or a thing to do, but the way thoughts of family passed through her mind was like sand through fingers.

The dull beat was slowing, pulling at her heartbeat, asking it to slow down too.  The feeling she was holding her breath intensified, even as her breathing quickened to compensate.

Her fingers twitched, and clutched Snowdrop’s clothing.

Clutched at Snowdrop’s fur.

Same deal as the Promenade.  Only have to get you there.  Doesn’t matter if my aim sucks-

She clutched, lifting.  Snowdrop, in opossum form, was almost too heavy to lift.  Definitely too heavy to throw.  It wasn’t because of Snowdrop’s greedy scavenger diet.

-just have to hit a target the size of a barn door.  Gotta get you over there.  Can’t get you over there.

Snowdrop’s paws clutched at Avery.

People were coming in through the woods.  Avery could see an old woman, solemn.  An old man- a dirty old man, not in the way that was normally meant.  A teenager wore red.  Another man looked unhinged, laughing at nothing.

The Wolf coming like she’d said she would.  Splintered apart but still her Wolf.  Armed with guns.

Her hand slipped from Snowdrop and went to a pocket.  Second by second, it felt less and less like it was attached to her.  Snowdrop beat her to the punch, reacting to sentiment, and grabbing what she’d wanted.  Glamour.  Putting it in Avery’s hand.

The Aurum was watching.

“We got her,” the old woman murmured, one hand in her pocket, the other hand holding a handgun.  The corner of her mouth pulled back, less like someone had told a joke she’d mildly disapproved of, and more like she disapproved of everything.  “We didn’t mess anything up, doing that?”

“No,” the Aurum said.  “Not for me, anyway.  For her…”

Avery’s hand worked.  She saw the Aurum’s eyes move, noticing.

“Are you involved?” Avery asked.  For a moment, there was a bottomless pit where the word she wanted was.

“You’re not impartial?” Snowdrop asked, becoming human again.  Shielding Avery from the old woman with her body.

Avery pushed at Snowdrop’s side, to make her stop doing that.  She wasn’t very good at pushing Snowdrop right now.  The snow she was lying in felt very cold, soaking through her clothes.

“I’m not part of what they’re doing,” the Aurum Coil replied.  He turned to the group.  “I’m technically impart-”

“Then fuck off,” Avery cut him off.

“Pretty please, sir,” Snowdrop said, glaring.  Avery, through her connection to Snowdrop, could feel the venom in those words.

He gave Avery and Snowdrop a long look.

Avery’s hand moved.  Clutching glamour without using it.

“This is a mundane matter, humans and humans, I take my leave.  It is clear from your words that you’re no longer pursuing a meeting with me,” the Aurum said.

“Yeah,” Avery said, voice a bit strained now.  “Fuck you.”

The Aurum Coil was already gone.

Avery brought her hand over, and when reaching for her wrist-

It scared her, how weak she was.

Snowdrop pulled on the other wrist.  Bringing it onto Avery’s stomach.  Ropes and ribbons and bracelets hung there.

Fingers plucked a charm from her charm bracelet, while pulling the Promenade boon sealing bracelet off.  She brought her hand down, smacking it into snow, glamour around her hand.

The charm exploded out, taking full size, becoming a door, standing there.  The surrounding glamour provided complementary terrain- walls on either side.  Blocking off the others.  A door slammed into existence.  One Avery didn’t recognize.

Snowdrop, worming beneath Avery in opossum form, became human again, using the size change to help push Avery up, toward an upright position.  She reached for the doorknob, pushing-

And a gun fired, followed swiftly by many more, like one person had had the bright idea to shoot the glamour, and the rest had taken that prompt.

A deafening noise, gunshots overlapping, and the door was shot to pieces- half of it coming apart in splinters, half in glamoured dust.  Runes on her arms and chest glowed beneath clothes and bullets curved away from her in the air.  Some were too on target, though, or they veered left, away from her right arm, and toward another part of her, grazing her left arm instead, or her shoulder.  Avery’s fingers dragged down the surface as she flopped down, Snowdrop under her.  Partially because she didn’t have the strength to be upright.  Partially because she needed to go low, to not get shot again.

Now her hip hurt.  Like her blood pumping from that surge of action, the movement of her leg, it was like it had woken up the pain that had forgotten to hit her until now.

Awoken, awakening, she thought.

It felt like her thoughts were a little slipperier, ramblier.

“Sneaky,” the teenager in red said.

Were there any names Avery could call?

She thought of her dad, as the person she wanted right next to her.  Useless way of thinking.  Her mom.  Just as useless.  They hadn’t awoken.  Nora-

Even less likely to help.

Jude.  She thought about calling Jude.  That would be so unfair, so horrible.  He couldn’t get here in time, couldn’t do enough if he did.

Useless way of thinking.

Same for her friends.  Same for locals.

There was one, but she wasn’t sure.

She brought her hands together again.

“Do we drag her down to the dark, or do we kill her right here?”

And again.

“Our goddess, naked and glorious, forever drenched in blood-”

And again.

“Forever drenched in blood,” was the chorus.

Third clap.

“-she’d appreciate having the ability to use her.  But I like things simple.”

The gardener’s gloves let her push an object out of reality.  When it came back, it came back badly damaged.

A door dropped down, so old it was a grey-green with a moss or mold growing on the door.  It was so badly damaged there were holes in it.  It hit snow, and fell, swapping out to be one of Avery’s promenade doors as it settled, landing flat on the snow near Avery’s feet.  She couldn’t read it from where she lay.

“What the fuck?”

The old woman shot the door.

“It’s real, this time.”

Snowdrop, breathing quickly, had worked her way out from being under Avery.  She met Avery’s eyes, and she communicated by impulse.

Avery sent a silent affirmation.  Better if one of us gets away.

“Mom, dad, Jude, you’re here!” Snowdrop cried out.

Some heads turned.  Snowdrop took that opportunity, leaped over Avery, and landed on the door.  Damaged as it was, it broke under her weight, and she went through.  That, Avery had expected.

But she held onto Avery’s top, dragging her closer by sheer body weight.  Or- Avery was pulled close enough to see.  The world through the door was on a different angle, a window looking out over a strange city.  Snowdrop sat on the floor, foot braced against the doorframe, pulling on Avery’s top.

Avery’s skin dragged across the broken wood- the hole wasn’t quite big enough for her.  She reached over, grabbing, using arm strength to pull herself through.

A rough hand grabbed the back of her jacket, sweater, and shirt.  Pulling her up and away.  She’d been partially through and that was reversed.  The giggling man holding her was stronger than Snowdrop.

Avery’s hands that had been gripping the door slid along the opening, now.

“Aaaaaaaaaaa!” Snowdrop screamed, from the far side of the door.

“Give them a message,” Avery whispered to Snowdrop.

“AAaaaaaaa!”

Snowdrop’s voice was only part of that alarmed, desperate communication.  The familiar bond flared.  Avery used will to communicate what she couldn’t with words, because a sharp knife was being brought to her throat.

Drawing a line, side to side.

“Aaaaaaa-!” Snowdrop’s cry was cut off, as the Promenade boon ceased to have effect, and the door disappeared, leaving only the broken, bloodstained one.

“It’s still a church, even if it’s not yours!” Lucy called out.  “Sanctuary holds!”

“Get out, get out,” Verona told the assembled group in the dark church.  The only light that reached them came through windows.  “They’re not supposed to stop you.  It means bad karma.  Get to the door, get home ASAP.  McCauleigh, lead the way.  Find the closest way up to K.A. or K.F.”

“Follow my voice!”

“What makes a church a church?  Is it the religious iconography?” Maricica asked.

She smashed the wall at the back of the church, punching a hole through it.  Smashing what had been hanging there.

“That’s how you’re playing it?” Lucy asked.

“Is it the religious material in the pews?”

“She-!”

Maricica, moving in shadow, tore across the pews.  Wood was lifted up from church floor and thrown at walls.  People shrieked.

It was keeping them from running to the exit and leaving, as they huddled down.

“It’s a trick!  Don’t stop!” Lucy called out.

People weren’t budging.

“Is it the steeple?” Maricica asked.

A hole was torn in the roof.  Architecture was knocked aside, and thrown into a neighboring building.  Lucy could feel the damage and the rolling effects through the floor.

“Answer me now, or forfeit your point,” Maricica said.

It was a trap.  There were easy answers that jumped to mind about what a church was, how it was part of a community, but challenging Maricica on that front?  She would leap forward to counter, and Lucy had a gut feeling that a lot of it would be pretty damning.

If she said it was about sentiment, would Maricica be poised to shatter the sentiments of the people here?  Break them without breaking sanctuary?  That was allowed- someone could ask for sanctuary after committing a crime, then be condemned and convinced to change her mind and turn herself in.  It could even be intense and awful.

If she said it was about community, would Maricica tear into that community, fast and quick enough?

There were points that could be argued, but-

It was a distraction.

“Sanctuary doesn’t lapse when something specific is broken,” Lucy said.  “It doesn’t lapse even if the church is gone.  These people have the right to claim sanctuary and be safe going home.  Even if there’s no church.”

Verona was whispering to Oakham.

“It’s better if you do it.”

“Why?”

“No counterargument, then?” Maricica asked.

She brought her head low, on a level with Lucy.  Lucy could barely see in the gloom, but light caught on the blood that was so thick on Maricica’s head that it covered the upper half of it, much like the angels had been covered by eyeless metal helmet-masks.  That blood broke down into trickles that ran down her lower face, over lips, cheeks, and down hair.

“It’s a side argument from the main argument,” Lucy said.

“That’s fine,” Maricica replied.  “We can circle back to the main argument and destroy it.”

Lucy heard Oakham grunt after Verona’s short utterance.  Oakham walked, cane tapping.

“Fuck.  Fuck fuck fuck.”

Maricica upended pews, sending them flying.  More people screamed, shouted, and tried to protect one another, or ran into one another.

Oakham kept walking.

“Is a church a church without its arching ceiling?” Maricica asked.

She reached upward.

Beams cracked and broke.  People kept on screaming, and Lucy’s step forward saw her collide with people moving the other way, in the dark.

Toward the door.

Until the section of ceiling and rooftop were tossed forward.  They landed outside, past the door, and the light streaming in from outside there was blocked.  Dust rolled inside, making people cough.

The panic rose as people realized the way out was blocked.

Oakham had stopped.

“A church is a church because of belief.  People believe in you,” Lucy said.

Will you destroy yourself to counter that?

“And I’ve abdicated this church.  The people here who believe in me do so without need for this building.”

“Blood and glory!” a woman raised her voice.

The cry was picked up by others.  It became a chant- one of two overlapping sets of voices.  One was short, the repeated phrase, but some others were drawing it out, adding words in another language that sounded vaguely Fae.

“You agree!?” Maricica called out.

There was a general cry of affirmation from her worshipers.

“What do I do?” Oakham asked, not all that far from Lucy.

“What-”

More of the rooftop broke, cutting Lucy off.  Maricica kept to shadow, possibly leaving room for vague interpretations by the Innocent present.

“Do what you were doing,” Lucy tried again.

“But-”

“If you really can’t, then we can call her out.”

“Why me?” Oakham asked.

“Because you’re Innocent, you’re protected.”

“Less than I would be if I hadn’t stuck my nose into all of this, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“So you really weren’t fucking around, telling me not to pry, huh?”

“Fuck off and walk,” Lucy told her.

“Limp, you mean,” Oakham replied.

Lucy put a hand on Oakham’s shoulder as she walked by.  “Maricica!”

Someone shouted.  “You haven’t earned the right to say her name!”

They moved through the dark.  Some of their eyes, as they moved this way and that, seemed dark, like they’d dipped into the Abyss and come out with different eyes.  Maybe eyes that could see in the dark.

Their movements were chaos, they were a mob, and they were mobbing together in opposition to her.  To Lucy.

Someone threw something.  It broke.  Glass- a bottle.

Every single instinct Guilherme had instilled in her was flinching, ready to react in response to how they were moving around her, how the wind brushed against exposed skin.  Bubbleyum had taught her to fight in groups, and feeling attacked and surrounded by this group was provoking those same instincts.

But if she threw a punch she’d violate the sanctuary and her ability to benefit from it.

“What do you need?” Grandfather asked.

“You,” Lucy replied, heart hammering.

“Tell me where to shoot.”

She reached back toward him, hand lightly smacking the side of his stomach, before she moved to the side and found his arm.  She placed his hand on her own shoulder.

I don’t need you to shoot.

He squeezed it.

“These are shitty games to be playing, Maricica.”

“Shitty games for a shitty god!” Verona called out.

A piece of wood crashed into the floor right in front of Oakham.  Oakham kept walking, limping slightly, the tap of her cane punctuating her steps.  She stepped onto the fallen wood, using it as a bridge to cross the place where floorboards had broken.

People came running toward her.  Helen was there, by the door, but didn’t approach, only standing by, holding the black sticks in both hands.  Tense, like she was ready for an excuse.

“Defensive only!” Lucy called out, realizing Oakham might not know.

The end of the cane was used to block a reaching hand.  Oakham stumbled.  Someone grabbed for her, seizing her by the side of her coat collar.

“That’s a violation of sanctuary!” Lucy called out.

“Seconded!” Verona shouted back.

“Play by the rules!” McCauleigh shouted.

Oakham broke the hold, stumbling again, and backed up to the open door, brandishing her cane for self defense.

Oakham glanced over her shoulder.  “Bracken!”

“What!?”

“It only looks blocked if you’re not close to the door, there’s ways over and around the mess!  The way is clear!”

Bracken was wrangling kindergarten-age Bag and a bunch of other kids who were Bag’s age- maybe clinging to him because he was the closest thing to a caretaker.  He began moving toward the door.  Others, glancing up at the ceiling, illuminated where moonlight came in through the hole above, did the same.

“This isn’t a church, it certainly isn’t mine, now that I’ve abdicated and trashed it,” Maricica said.  Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried to every ear present, Lucy imagined.  “And it’s not a sanctuary.  I’m not convinced by your argument.”

“You’re not-”

Maricica’s fist thudded against the wall.

A chunk of roof fell, striking Oakham.

“Maricica!” Lucy roared.

Maricica’s people, realizing the sanctuary was violated, pressed in, charging from every direction.  Grandfather turned around, back to Lucy, to cover her rear.  McCauleigh was covering Verona and Julette.

Lucy glanced back, past Grandfather.  Lit by the scant light coming in from outside, Oakham wasn’t brained or dead.  But she sat, hunched over, hands near her ankle.  It looked like the way her weight had come down on it…

“I challenge you!” Lucy shouted.  “On violation of sanctuary, on karmic grounds, by Law!”

“I’m prepared to meet your challenge.”

“Alabaster!” Lucy shouted.

The lights nearest to the door flicked on, and they glowed more white than they had before the damage to the church.

The Alabaster Assembly walked in, stepping her way down the debris before passing through the open door.  In the gloom, it was hard to see how her eye sockets were vacant of everything except shifting flowers.

“What’s going on?” someone asked.  An Innocent, Lucy guessed.

“You hit your head,” Bracken said.  He’d stopped short of approaching Oakham when the Alabaster had come in.

“I hit my head?”

“You hit your head and you’re delirious, you’re not thinking straight,” Bracken said.

“I don’t remember hitting my head.”

“Because you hit your head,” he said, brusque.

“Harm was done despite sanctuary,” the Alabaster Assembly said, looking down at Oakham.

“I move that she fix Melissa Oakham and then some,” Lucy said.  “With no claim granted or given from the healing.  On top of other penalties.”

“Would be nice,” Oakham said, her voice small, hunched over her leg.

Maricica stood in the shadows.  Her smile was barely visible in the gloom.  Standing at a different angle, Lucy wouldn’t have seen it.

“It’s reasonable,” the Assembly said.  “She does have a counter-challenge.”

“Several,” Maricica said.

“So we’ll have to see.  This doesn’t look good, though, Maricica.”

“I assert bias on your part.  You were literally created by Verona Hayward and Lucy Ellingson.”

“And Avery Kelly,” Lucy said.

Maricica smiled and made a sound of amusement.  Then she said, “You cannot judge this fairly on your own, Alabaster.”

“Agreed.”

The voice was the Sable’s.  He came out of a shadowy doorway to Maricica’s right.

“I’d say this doesn’t even the scales,” Maricica said.  “I call for two additional representatives.  Those with understanding of these matters, of power, and of sanctuary.  I leave it to you two to make the selection.”

Lucy blinked, reeling a bit.  She’d been right.  About the missing pieces, the oddities.

“No objection, I think?” Verona ventured.  She’d walked up a bit to be closer to Lucy.  “Right?”

“No objection,” Lucy said.  “Provided they’re properly neutral, nothing subversive.”

“We can dig a little to ensure there’s no hidden links or past setups,” the Sable said.

She was getting a sense of what was happening.

She smiled.

Charles was restless, his patience tested.

The Sword Moot continued.  Damaryon Steyn was making arguments about sanctuary.

If I was still capable of having high blood pressure, this would be shaving years off my life, he thought.

Some goblins were calling on him, asking him to adjudicate a dick measuring contest.  The owners of the dicks were unaware they were being measured.  Apparently that was Liberty Tedd’s idea for a challenge, to tie him up in knots and limit his ability to act.

He idly distorted time and place.  The goblins weren’t tied into enough other things that the time dilation would get complicated.  To them, he would arrive in moments.  In effect, time would slow down for them, then speed up after to snap them back to the present.

He put them on the list of others he had to get to.

It didn’t help that he couldn’t be entirely sure about what the girls were attacking or how.  The last time had been the Alabaster, and that had been a knock.

Damaryon wrapped up.

“Any objections?” Ann Wint asked.

Some people indicated no, but Mr. Mele raised a hand.  “Yes.  I’m sorry.  But there’s too many of us who rely on the element of surprise.”

“That element can be turned against you,” Anthem replied.

“You said you had another fairy court that wanted your attention,” Mrs. Ferguson said, to Charles.

Oh, there was more than just the one.  One that wanted him to judge a beauty contest that would end in bloody execution of the least beautiful.  Gashwad from Kennet was wanting to formally declare war on squirrels to the north.  He’d gathered up some like-minded goblins to do the same.  There was a small practitioner family deciding now was the time for him to handle a dispute.  And the dick measuring contest.

He couldn’t help but let on that he was annoyed but if he showed weakness by illustrating how overwhelmed he was, then they might go for the jugular.  Many of these people were that type.

“I have several.  Why?”

“I’d like to suggest a break, so we can eat dinner.  Nobody is served by us getting cranky.”

Letting them regroup?  That was worse, even if it gave Charles some respite.

“Let’s treat this like a proper flilibuster,” Charles gave his answer.  “No leaving, no breaks.  If you don’t have it in you to stay for the full meeting, that’s your choice.”

The strategy and discussion immediately began to start.  Multiple groups planning how to break things down.  Lucy and Anthem, Deb Cloutier and Ann Wint, Musser, Hennigar, and Songetay.

“You all are really that interested in dragging this out?” Charles growled the words..

“You have a lot of stubborn personalities here,” Grandfather said.  “Everyone knows that if they step out or go home, the others are free to continue without them.”

“You’ve manufactured hell for yourselves,” Charles said.

“So long as it’s awful for you,” Lucy replied.

There were some retorts he could make, but he held his tongue.  “Carry on with your arguments.”

“I’d like to add my own,” Grandfather said.  “We were attacked while holding a council meeting.  It’s too important that we have those.  They should be included in the list of protected spaces.”

The Sable entered Kennet, Charles noticed.  He crossed Kennet quickly, to get from the edges of Kennet above to here.  Hair and coat blew in the wind, his footsteps heavier than they should’ve been as he walked across the edge of the stone dais.

Charles sealed them against listening ears as the Sable leaned in.  “I know I said I wasn’t likely to sit in for more of your adventures in this vein, but I was in the area, seeing to my responsibilities.  I thought I’d see how you were.”

Charles met his eyes, taking that in.  What responsibilities?  The Sable handled things like gates to new realms opening, and if that was their line of attack… no.  That would give away too much.

The Sable also handled other matters.  Death and what came after.  The passing of a practitioner often meant that oaths had to be settled, responsibilities, legacies, and ongoing practices had to be managed.  The Sable saw to all of that.  Like the executor of a will, working quietly and secretly to lay things out as neatly as possible, to minimize wrinkles.

Charles didn’t have the sense it was one of his Red Heron students or teachers.  He turned his eye to Lucy Ellingson, and saw the Sable’s work there.  A redistribution of power.  Kennet was deemed to have failed the girls in their responsibilities, so that was a power hit.  But there was more to it.  A chunk missing, the ties and cooperative sharing of power now had a void, loose threads trailing toward it that had been tied up.  Like an organ removed, the veins cauterized.

“Hayward?” Charles asked, quiet.

“You’re most attached to her, are you?  Closest to you, in some ways.  I can’t say, and you shouldn’t infer.  That’s dangerous to do.”

Not Hayward.

Charles could think back to when he’d been a boy.  Attending a school not all that different from the one the girls had attended here.  Slightly bigger.  He’d been slightly younger than they’d been when they’d awoken.  This was before he’d practiced or knew of that world.

There’d been a girl in that class, a first crush, brunette, not a redhead, but possessed of energy and smiles and she was a giggly ‘girly girl’, everything he’d bemoaned when talking to his friends, but with her he’d found it charming.

It wasn’t that Avery Kelly was-

-had been–

-a girly girl.  She hadn’t been.  But there had been an energy and a positivity to her that made his thoughts go back to his first crush, all those years ago.  He hated them for it.  Musser, Hennigar, the idiot with his puppet, the ogre mage, the brute who’d killed his daughter, Anthem, Anthem’s girls.

Even Lucy, because she was becoming part of it.  Because Lucy would hate him more for the passing of her friend, when he was only reflecting the system as it was, turning its ugliness against it.  He was a response, natural and necessary, to things that had existed and gone in a bad direction long before he’d even found the practice.

He’d hoped that Verona would come around.  He’d thought that maybe even Avery or Lucy could come around too, after Kennet was tested just one more time, after a long onslaught of invaders and witch hunters, and failed where they’d won or persevered so far.  He’d had to abandon that, around the time Edith had been excised from the Girl by Candlelight, because it was holding him back too much.  Because they might lose Kennet, but he now believed they’d try something else.

It was too likely they’d be like Rook, getting old before they abandoned their approach.  So he’d given the tacit approval to go after them, to hunt them, to pressure them by angles that had been off limits before.

And now Avery was dead and with her passing, it felt like a part of him, buried deep and mostly forgotten, a boy who’d never been brave enough to talk to a girl he admired, was dead with her.  Worse would follow.

The world felt darker, for this.

He slumped further in his throne, listening as the debate continued on.

Charles growled, pacing by the fire outside the cabin he’d made within his realm.  Wood creaked and popped, snow near the fire sizzled, but nothing changed.  He was frustrated, and the frustration leaked out, making him annoyed with everything.

Annoyed with the cabin.  Annoyed that he’d once thought of devoting a full two years to building a cabin from scratch.  Something he’d live in until old age, with the seed of it being his Demesne.  He hadn’t waited to make the entire thing his Demesne because he’d wanted the process of building it himself, and he hadn’t been confident he could claim an entire building, so he’d only taken the room.  When he’d become Carmine, he’d needed to establish a place that was his, and he’d chosen this.  The shortcut he hadn’t wanted.

It grated, even if he knew it had been logical – there was no giving up this throne and he’d never be a normal man, chopping down trees and doing the manual work, buying the necessities with money earned from summoning contracts, getting everything else naturally, or by creating Others to do the specifics.  That bridge had needed to be burned, and he’d needed this space.  But it frustrated, grated, and mocked.

The girl he’d had a crush on two decades ago now kept returning to his mind.  He hadn’t thought of her for more than a few seconds since he was twenty and had idly looked her up online to see what she was up to.  Her and other classmates.  Now she dogged him.

Wood popped, snapped, and creaked, as he wanted to make the building into something else but couldn’t envision what that would be.

“Are you alright?”

The Aurum, walking through the trees, the centipede slithering around him.

Charles’ voice was a growl.  “They made me sit though a full waking day of that.  Me as administrator, sitting through arguments and petty debate, people organizing against me.”

“I was there for the last part of it.”

“I didn’t have the chance to ask about your contest.”

“Was hardly a contest at all.  I think he wanted to die to have his demons off his heels, and for a role like this, you have to be prepared to embrace eternity.”

“For a role as short-lived as Aurum?”

“Speak for yourself.  You barely expected to last weeks, let alone months.”

“Let alone years.  But now, what they’re doing, using my nature against me-”

“Our nature against us,” the Aurum replied.

“What now?” Charles asked, anger in his voice.  “What next?  More meetings, they say.”

“Could be far worse,” the Aurum replied.

“I can’t tell if you’re going to give me a joke or if you actually mean worse.”

“An incarnation of Pain has been on the radar of the Childs family in Thunder Bay.  They did some work outside of that area, including practice.  I won’t bore you with details.  You know how these things can reach us, by channels of communication.”

“More you than me.  Why does this incarnation matter?”

“There is a white mask that makes someone undergo torture for days or weeks, in exchange for protection from harm.  Time dilates, to make room for the pain.”

“I know the mask you speak of.  Clementine Robertjon had it for a while.”

“Hayward asked about it.  Nothing came of it, but…”

“But she asked?” Charles growled.

“With their first ploy they tested your patience.  With their second, they twisted the knife.  That she even asked about the mask is a good indication she’s willing to combine the two.”

“And with Avery Kelly…”

“They have more incentive.  Down we spiral,” Charles said.  “I can’t stop what I’m doing.”

“You don’t need to convince me.”

“I wish there was a moment I could go back to, or point to.  In the midst of my time as a forsworn, but it’s more bone-deep, like I soaked in it.  Every part of this, from every angle…”

It felt like the cabin did.  Like the trees, the ice.

But it wasn’t a dream of a house.  It was the practice, and virtually everything being built with it.

“…If I could point to it, or distill it down, I could show people.  But I think they need to feel it from every angle, over time, before it sets in.  But it hit me earlier.  They’ll be like Crooked Rook.”

He could sense the Aurum digging into him, using the tools the Judges had been given.  To check veracity, truth.  To use the words someone had as a window into what those words were about.  Reminding himself about Crooked Rook.

The Aurum nodded.

“Are you mad?” the Aurum asked.  “That your blood goddess and I took things there?  You were indisposed, I couldn’t check with you.”

The building creaked.  Trees strained under the weight of snow on them.  Ice across his broken, bloody realm cracked.  Giving evidence to feelings that could not be fully demonstrated by the scowl on his face.

The Aurum smiled.  “I’m not one to gainsay you, but I must admit you seem mad.”

“Not mad.”

The Sable appeared at the edge of his domain, then crossed to the island, standing in the shadows and smoke on the far side of the fire.

“You’re done?” the Aurum asked.  “Your loose ends tied up?”

“Not mine, but yes.”

“So she’s dead,” Charles growled.  That frustration intensified for a moment, then started to ease.  He grabbed himself a beer from the cooler sitting by his throne, offering one to the others.  The Aurum shook his head.  The Sable looked confused at the notion.

Charles sat, bringing his throne out before settling.  “Shot in the woods west of Kennet.  The soldiers from Kennet below moved the body.”

“Does Maricica know?” the Aurum asked.

Charles shook his head slightly.  “She will.  Even removed from her past self, she’s good at picking up the details.  For now, she has her business, I have mine, and I can’t involve myself too much or I stop being as impartial… which hurts us both.”

“You trust her,” the Sable said.

“More or less,” Charles said.  “It’s a strange trust.  I was ready for her to take over if I was removed, then they didn’t remove me.  If I die, I don’t mind, I came to terms with that having to happen years ago.  What else could she do to me, besides killing me?  I don’t see her reversing my work or acting against my plans, it doesn’t serve her.  Helping me does.”

“They’ll be weak and disorganized.  If Maricica’s forces were to push on Kennet…”

“They could take it,” Charles finished.  “The Blue Heron is the last real bastion of the old establishment in the region.”

“In your region,” the Aurum said.  “Mine’s smaller.”

“That will be handled soon,” Charles said.  “They wanted to make that a priority, it’s good to prioritize.  Some of the St. Victor’s practitioners are very intent on taking it.  After that, while the girls are reeling, we can crush them.  In the moments after, we can expand your throne, Aurum, to make up for what was lost.”

“Strategically forfeited.  That’s fine,” the Aurum said.  “It’s nice in the short term.  It makes things simpler.  Having less of a realm.  Less to do, moment to moment.”

Even now, Charles, in the back of his mind, was arbitrating tiny things.  Balances, conflict, deciding what could stand and what couldn’t.  How would one barrier hold up to certain aggressive spirits?  What came of certain echoes that encountered certain forces?  Most of it was unconscious.  More unconscious because he was trying to find moments to think clearly, pushing all of that out of his mind while he digested this.

It was too easy to become ‘the Carmine’ in the same way that someone could take on the mantle of Death and become Death.

He glanced at the Sable.  A stand-in for Death when there wasn’t Death personified to handle something.  “You’re quiet.”

“Always, by habit.”

“Are you still on my side?  You won’t turn on me now?”

“I am.  And I won’t.  With the Alabaster gone, the sobering task of being the oldest judge falls to me.  I adjust.”

“You’ll want to be mindful you don’t fall into the same trap the Alabaster did,” the Aurum said.  “Getting so caught up in being an edifice, a rock of stability, that you neglect duties.”

“I already mentioned I’ve been doing my duties,” the Sable said.

“Well, while we’re on the topic, I’ll go talk to the Alabaster,” the Aurum said.

“You won’t turn her,” Charles told him.

“It can’t hurt.  And I want to get a better sense of her.  She’s vulnerable in her way, so there might be a chance.”

“Vulnerable how?” Charles asked.

“For something as connected as she is, tied in part to most of the region- your region and a bit beyond it, actually, she lacks connections.  She had her creators, the girls, but…”

Charles nodded, responding to the unsaid.  One less, now.  One less connection.

“It’s a contrast to you.  You were put where you are by the assistance of others, who you trust in that bizarre, broken way.”

“I do.”

“I’ve only got the one big connection I kept,” the Aurum said, laying a hand on the centipede’s head.  Sovereign.  “The Assembly was put into place by others, but the structure… she could grow to have it, but she doesn’t have it now.  She’s fragile.”

“Alright.”

“What I am, my realm?  I cover opportunity, revolution, change, progress,” the Aurum said.  “I stand and I look out on the region- what I can see of it.”

“To be mended soon, don’t worry,” Charles repeated himself, arms folded, beer in hand.

“There are many tipping points.  Many houses of cards.  They can set up their moot, they can plan another angle of attack, but we’re not all that far from a meaningful victory, which will put us over the hump,” the Aurum said.  “The next victory after that comes easier, and the victory after that comes easier still.”

“And you think that starts with the Alabaster?”

“I think it can’t hurt to try.”

Charles nodded.  The Aurum’s centipede swept him out of Charles’ domain.

He looked at the Sable, eyebrow raised.

“What?” the Sable asked.

“What about you?  What are you doing?”

“I do what I’ve always done.  You don’t need to worry about me.”

Then the Sable was gone, too.

Charles settled back in his seat.  It wasn’t immediate, but that creaking of the cabin and cracking of the ice settled.  It was like the growling of the Carmine throne itself, restless, uneasy, and angry.  Something wild that hated cages, that had spent all day caged and taunted.

He suppressed it, finding himself again.  Charles the summoner.  Charles, who felt attachments for those he shouldn’t.  Charles, who needed to channel all those feelings, now with a new one added, into something that was still vicious, but better aimed.

Red, yellow, white, black.  Stop, I really want a freaking snack.

Red, black, yellow, white.  Stop, I could do with a freaking bite.

She moved by diagonals, stepping on tiles, weaving through the crowd.

Red, yellow-

She glanced around, trying to see the route.  Things moved around from time to time.

Her stomach growled.

She looked at the spaces.  Uhhhh.  What was it?

The clocks ticked all around the Promenade.  She felt the tension increasing.  Red yellow black white stop for bite… what was after?

A Lost with a giant’s head and a regular body, head in a wheelbarrow with body bent over, crashed into Snowdrop, knocking her aside.  He flashed a smile.  “Sorry!”

She started to stand, but she was hungry, tired.  A huge part of her had been attached to Avery, and that was…

A Lost with long legs tripped over her, knocking her to the ground again.

Her arms shook as she pushed herself to a standing position.  She’d dropped things.  She dropped things easily now.  She’d forgotten how easily that happened, when she’d spent months being able to draw on the familiar bond.  She scrambled to catch stuff before it rolled too far away, but felt her being snap to the black tile she’d touched as she reached.

She grabbed the drink container, and then the bag of coins.

A distant train tooted its horn.  Snowdrop became aware of a coordination across the Promenade.  Everyone went through their motions and matched the rhythm of the place, and in the process, they were clearing out of the way.

She saw a very alarmed looking dog, eyes bugging out, with a train locomotive behind him, near the mouth of the promenade.  Aimed at the promenade.

There were Lost who traveled four or five tiles at a time, there was even a woman with paper wings flew nine tiles forward and one to the left.  And that train… from the way people were moving and clearing out of the way?  It was going to cross the entire promenade in record time.

Not even roadkill?  Train-kill?

She tried to get to her feet.  “Aaaaaa!”

“You’re Snowdrop, right?”

“Aaaaa!”

The Lost scooped her up.

The train whistled and raced by, the dog sprinting about half the way at two hundred kilometers an hour before the train picked up enough speed, cowcatcher touching the dog’s rump and lifting it up.  Curled up, momentum kept it plastered to the front of the train, yelping, as the train raced on by.

The Promenade shifted, people carrying on their way.

“Aaaaaa.”

Her rescuer was a big guy, bodybuilder muscular and seven feet tall, with a square jaw and white-toothed smile barely visible as he turned his head to look at the train.  He had a dollar-store plastic mask of someone hideous tied to the front of his head, and a plastic dollar-store chest covering and things on his arms doing much the same for the rest of his front.  There was a moment the angles were all right where he really did look like someone who’d spent their life not taking care of themselves, then took a ride through a trash compactor.

“You are, right?  Snowdrop?”

“Yes,” Snowdrop said, panting.

“I heard you saved this place.  And nobody’s helping you?”

“Dunno.  I don’t think they recognized me.”

“Want a ride?” he asked.  “You look worn out.”

She nodded.

He settled her on his shoulder.  The heels of her shoes ‘tokked’ against the hard plastic shell of his front-cover.

“Where am I taking you?” he asked, while walking.

“Coffee shop.”

He waited for a second, then moved the opposite direction.

“Wish we’d known about the train,” Snowdrop said.  “That would have made things simpler.”

“I think it’s only when nobody’s on the Promenade,” the big guy said.  He put up a hand.  “Fugly Bob.”

She reached down and shook it.  “Snowdrop. I’d thank you by giving you a flier, vacation time at Kennet found, but things are kind of sucky right now.  There and here.  I don’t have fliers.”

“Practitioner on the Path!” someone hollered.

Various Lost all up and down the Promenade changed directions.  Some stayed on track.  Others didn’t.

Snowdrop thought about the message Avery had asked her to deliver.

No, not yet.

“What do you want to do?” Bob asked.

“Coffee shop.”

“Got it.  And no thanks necessary, you know.”

It was a Garrick.  Snowdrop recognized the face but didn’t know him by name.  She shifted around, swinging her legs to be behind Bob, and then slid down his back.  She hung around his neck, peering over his shoulder, until there was a real risk she’d be seen.  She dropped further down, out of sight.

Bob put a hand back, helping to catch her and stop her from falling to the ground.  Not that she needed it.  She was an opossum.  She could climb.  Then he went the extra mile, turning his body so his bulk was between Snowdrop and the Garrick.

Snowdrop snuck a peek and watched as the guy went to catch a train as it pulled up.  When he was gone, she climbed up again, sitting with one leg on either side of his neck.

He took Snowdrop to the coffee shop, dropping to a crouch so she didn’t bash her face on the top of the door.

“Heyyy, there’s our repeat customer,” the Absent Barista said.  She was visible as a silhouette in the midst of the steam.  She carried some cups over, and as she stepped out of the steam, she became less visible, effectively invisible.  “You want the usual?  Just the milk coffee?”

“Uhh, dunno,” Snowdrop grunted.  She moved from Bob’s shoulder to the nearest stool, with him providing a helping hand.

“Tell me when you know.”

He grabbed a stool and dragged it over to be next to her, plunking himself down.  The stools were varying heights and constructions to accommodate different types of Lost, ranging from ones for literal elephants to ones for smaller Others like Snowdrop.  There was even a two dimensional stool.  Bob took a sturdy one, that put his head at roughly the same level as hers.

“Thank you,” she told him.

She was so tired and wired and emotionally wrung out that her hands shook as she put them on the counter.  She balled one into a fist and then wrapped the other hand around it, trying to make it be still.  Then she remembered she needed to pay and she dug in her pocket.

Just a few painted coins.

She was in survival mode.  There were different balances she needed to hit.  Nutrition was one.  But also Self.  Those contradicted some.  Was it better to have coffee or better to eat?  Better to eat something tasty that restored her Self, or better to eat something healthy that made her strong on another level?  She was an adept dumpster diver, but that could get her in trouble, and that took resources too.

She needed to be strong to get the message out there.  To not ruin things in the meantime.  But that cost.

She didn’t have anything to give.  To get something more that she could then spare, she had… six painted coins.

A mug was placed in front of her.

“Hot milk,” the Absent Barista said, pouring.  The container had a bipedal cow with gushing udders on it.  Then she poured out a red-pink stream out of a small metal pitcher, pouring into the center for a moment, until the milk was pink.  She finished with a loose spiral drawn on the surface.  “Strawberry…”

“I can’t- I should eat food,” Snowdrop said, even as the pink caught her eye.

“And espresso,” the Barista said, pouring out of another pitcher, drawing a spiral inside the lines of the other spiral.  “For the nervous opossum energy.  On the house.”

Snowdrop reached out, putting cold and shaky hands with bones that felt real tired around the hot mug.

“Food too.  Whatever you need.”

“I need a lot,” Snowdrop said.

“Then start ordering.”

So she did- after chugging her strawberry coffee milk.  A grilled cheese to start, then fish from a beheaded fishman, then a salad-y wrap.  She took a bit to have a drink- water and then more strawberry coffee milk, and then downed a fried octopus burger and a plate of ‘grilled mess’ on the side.

“Refill?” the Barista asked.  “It’s why you come, isn’t it?  The free refills?”

Snowdrop nodded.

The Barista set to work, flipping the switch on the machine.

“I was thinking.  Would you like company?” the Absent Barista asked, her back to Snowdrop, steam all around her.

“That’s too much.”

“I could do with a break too,” Bob said.  He’d only ordered the fried octopus sandwich and a coffee.  “I can come.”

“It’s dangerous,” Snowdrop said.

“Okay.  I can come,” he said.

She took the drink from the Absent Barista, not sure what to say or do.

Overloaded, already at her limit, with people being nice to her… her eyes welled up.

Bob put his hand at her back, rubbing, which made it worse.

“It’s been hard, has it?” he asked.

“Been lonely,” Snowdrop said, quiet, her voice cracking.

They left her alone, Bob rubbing her back, while she took a moment to let tears flow, head bent over the strawberry milk coffee.

“Whenever you’re ready,” the Absent Barista said.  “I’ll get someone to take over the shop.”

Snowdrop nodded.

It ended up being another fifteen minutes.  Her legs were tired and it took time for the food to fuel her.

She put her money on the counter, even though it was barely enough to pay for the coffee, and the Absent Barista didn’t object or comment, only taking it and putting it in the register.

Snowdrop had to check the coast was clear, and she was one step out the door when Bob picked her up to put her on his shoulder.

The Absent Barista became the Absent Companion, pushing a cart out the door, with her things on the top level of the cart and a steaming machine on the bottom, giving her form.

“Tell me where we’re going,” Bob said.

Snowdrop pointed the way.  “But the best way I know is dangerous.”

“Where to?”

“There’s a door.  To the Run-On Sentence.”

“Ahhh,” he said, as the meaning of ‘dangerous’ became clear.

They pushed their way through the door and then made their way up the stone path to the concrete edifice that seemed to stretch up to the sky and out as far as the horizon.

Here, where some of the more dangerous Lost were interred.  Some were free to roam, kept in bounds by other forces and the four guards, and others weren’t allowed to leave their cells.

They didn’t make it far in before the inmates came after them.

Bob was no slouch.  He was strong, he was fit.  He, turning his face directly toward some of the ones stronger than him, was able to scare them off.  The steam from the machine the Absent Companion was pushing forward helped drive off the ones who could be burned.

A practitioner inside one cell pleaded for them to let him out.  A Lost would have switched places with him, gone to earth, amid his loved ones.  He didn’t know how long he’d been in here.

From the way he dressed and styled his hair… his family was long dead, probably.

Snowdrop had other concerns.  Getting out of here, getting the message to the right people.

It was a marathon run through a brutal Lost prison, where coming and going before, it would be hours of crossing, sneaking around, panicking, and this way was faster with Bob punching faces while the Absent Companion made steam and Snowdrop brandished rusty cutlery, going small to scamper up one arm and across a shoulder, to stab a hand that was trying to grab the Companion.

Until they reached a cell with a hole in the back.  A guard loomed close, but didn’t object.  They hadn’t broken rules, and they weren’t prisoners, so he didn’t stop them.

Into the Draw Near.  An alley so narrow that the cart scraped both sides at once.  Graffiti grew, elaborated on itself, and stalked them, depicting Lost figures armed with weapons.  Snowdrop went small, riding on the cart’s upper layer, ducking low, while the Absent Companion switched off the steam, and for a while, the cart moved on its own power, rolling ahead.  It was Bob who suffered worst, as blades were drawn and thrust out of the graffiti.  Slicing and cutting.

It was good they still had Bob, though, because enough practitioners had died here that their bodies were forming an obstacle for the Companion’s cart.  Some had been pulled into the wall, flesh sinking into the brickwork or concrete, and had dissolved into diffuse particles of spray paint.  Others just lay there, freshly dead, stabbed to death.

They made it through, onto a calmer path, where Snowdrop used one of the few items she still had with her.  Healing potion.  She emptied the container over Bob.

The Absent Companion changed the angle of the cart, so steam blew, and then reached out with the hand that formed to adjust Snowdrop’s pour.  Aiming it on the masks, not the muscular body.

This was a place they could rest, unnamed by practitioners.  Too quaint, too easy.  It made her nervous.

Snowdrop didn’t want to rest.

Two short detours through linked Paths, and then the last Path they needed to get across.

It was a battlefield.  Fires raged, and the ground was torn up.  Buildings had been toppled and the pieces of those buildings had been crushed in many different ways.  A volley of missiles or something from many different points around them were aimed skyward.  Toward the moon.  Snowdrop judged the distance.  Maybe five minutes.

“Hurry,” she said.  “It’s dangerous.”

“You don’t say?” Bob asked.

Again, Bob was invaluable, because the cart didn’t roll easy on this ground.

They ran across roads and then up the wall of a building that had broken off and fallen, laying across the street.  Its broken surface was easier to walk on than the churned-up dirt with scrap metal in it.

Up to a section of floor that had managed to remain intact.  Littered with debris, pieces of shrapnel, glass, and more.

Avery stirred, sensing Snowdrop.

“Don’t move,” Snowdrop urged her.  She looked up at the sky, judging the missiles’ progress.  They had maybe a minute.

The Absent Companion flicked on the free refill machine.  Snowdrop held out the canister that had been filled with healing potion, refilled, emptied, refilled, emptied, refilled, emptied on Bob.  Now it was refilled again.

She adjusted Avery’s jeans and then poured the potion onto the wound at her hip.

Refilled, partway.  No time.

Then poured again.

“Don’t move,” she told the others.  “Thank you.”

“Course,” Bob said, sitting with his back to the wall.  The Absent Companion sat by her machine, using it to pour herself and Bob some coffee.

Snowdrop felt it as Avery’s eyes opened.  Her heart soared.

“Hey, heya,” Snowdrop said.  “You’re alive, you’re good, you’re doing better, good job, you’re better.”

“Snow,” Avery groaned.  Her voice was faint.  “I get how you work, but can you not be that grim?  I feel like I’m not all that far from the edge, still, don’t tip me over it.”

Snowdrop leaned over, pressing her forehead to Avery’s.  She gave Avery all the feelings of giddy-to-the-point-of-being-nauseous relief, without the actual nausea.  Shaking hands gripped Avery’s clothes.

“Heya,” Snowdrop said.  “I tried hard.”

“What a good ‘possum,” Avery said, quiet.

Missiles hit the moon, annihilating it.  In the flash that lit up the black sky, Snowdrop saw the Queen of Ends on the horizon, looking up.  Then she was a black figure against a black sky again, that Snowdrop couldn’t see.

“They called your name and you didn’t answer,” Snowdrop said.

“What good can I do like this?” Avery asked, a little hoarse.

“That’s the message,” Snowdrop said.  “For Charles, the Judges, for Maricica.  That you’re dead.”

“Mm hmmm.”

Snowdrop settled at Avery’s side, to give her body heat.  She opened the familiar-master connection, which was really one sided when Avery was as weak as she was.  Head on Avery’s chest, leg curled up, across Avery’s legs, she lay beside her, still in a similar position to when she’d been crouched over her, to protect her from any harm that came her way.  She pushed Self and nutrition and healing and other things into Avery, and she would until she was shaky again, on her last legs.  She picked up coins that had fallen around Avery, from things Avery had missed, while she was lying unconscious, a crude bandage at her hip.  In case she needed to do another trip like that, or buy something vital.

That had been the last few days.  Leaving, filling herself up as much as she could to replenish her health and Self, refilling on healing potion, then coming back.  Rinse, repeat.

Pieces of the moon hit ground, spreading rolling shockwaves with catastrophe following, kicking up debris.  The building shook.

Avery had reached out, and Snowdrop had given.  For opossum-ness.  More symbolic than real.  The ability to play dead.

Told the Aurum to fuck off, if he was uninvolved, so he wouldn’t see the particulars or act on them.  Then she’d left a shell of herself behind.  Snowdrop had pulled her out and through the door, then did the bracelet back up again.

It just so happened that they’d landed on the Crash Course.  Where the glass was tempered in a way that made it a ticking time bomb, where gas leaked and cars left trails of oil and it all became one big Rude Goldberg machine that was set to blow.  They were only safe when they didn’t move, and Snowdrop had been spent enough that she couldn’t.  Avery was hurt badly enough she couldn’t.  So they rode it out like that.

It came in waves.  After the various crashes and explosions, there was weather leading to planes falling out of the sky and building collapse.  Then missiles and industrial explosions.

The moon continued to fall on the Path in pieces, some as big as continents.

“Did my glamour hold up?”  Avery’s voice was half heard and half felt, a groany, hoarse burr in her chest.

“Every checkmark you gave yourself,” Snowdrop murmured.  “Every victory, every accomplishment, everything you were proud of, every time you stood up for yourself, or someone else.  You put them on you.”

“Washes off with showers.”

“Glamour remembers Verona becoming a cat.  It remembers Lucy’s fox forms.  It remembers you doing good,” Snowdrop said, quiet.

There was a crash not all that far away, loud enough to deafen them, but the nuances of wind and other things meant it didn’t quite make it to doing that damage.  The building tilted.  They slid slightly on the floor, moving them out of the way of a shard of rock that speared the floor.

“Did it work?  Playing dead?” Avery asked.

“I don’t know.”

The Companion and Bob sat patiently with their coffees, and Snowdrop hugged Avery tighter, pushing everything she could spare into Avery, willing for her to get better.

“Carmine, Carmine, Carmine.”

The call came from one of the few voices in the region capable of calling him like this.  The Aurum, in the Alabaster domain.

He left the task he was finishing, some goblins who’d gotten the timing wrong for their invitation for him to oversee their challenges, starting in the evening instead of the morning.

The Alabaster’s domain was a section of city, sun shining on it so it glistened white.  Trilliums and the occasional prairie crocus filled garden beds around the roof.  She already had some people and Others she’d rescued around her, wearing white clothes, tending to the garden.

The Aurum wasn’t on the rooftop, but on the centipede, who wound around the building.

“You called?”

The Alabaster turned her eyes to him.  Empty eye sockets with blooming flowers in the darkness there.

“I did,” the Aurum said.  He didn’t look happy.  If he’d looked happy, Charles might have thought he had convinced the Alabaster Assembly to entertain some arguments.

Charles glowered.  “If it’s trouble that would ask us and the likes of the Mussers and Belangers to group up and face some titanic threat, I’d rather let the province burn.”

“To not know, you must be spent of power,” the Alabaster said.  “Are you making any attempt at recouping power to repay me what you owe?  I have a right to undertake my own mandate.”

“The goddess Maricica will give me some soon after she’s done with what she’s doing,” Charles replied.

“Which harms me,” the Alabaster said.  “She’s attacking my towns and cities.”

“She’s attacking a school.  She’s threatening your towns and cities, but that’s her prerogative.  If we needed everyone to be perfect, we’d be unable to use them at all.  It’s your right to have a mandate, it’s the Sable’s right to work with undead and wrong things.  It’s mine to work with the violent.  We balance one another, we find ways to work with one another.”

“I’m not feeling this balance.”

“You are owed power,” Charles said, biting back harsher words.  “I will get it to you.”

“If you will, it will take time.  Charles Abrams, Carmine Exile, you are gainsaid.”

Charles raised his eyebrows.

“Avery Kelly lives.”

Charles digested that, a frown creasing his forehead, lips pressed together.  “The Sable said-”

“That you shouldn’t infer or use his words.  He said he was tying up loose ends,” the Alabaster replied.

She looked over Charles’ shoulder.  Mentioning the Sable seems to have brought him.

“Loose ends for someone who didn’t die?” Charles asked.

“She dumped a lot of power into her spirit, her spirit pushed too.  If they want to play dead to the point the world bends to accommodate, I won’t object.”

“What good does this do?”

“Good,” the Sable replied, like it was a word he was trying out.

“You’re turning on me?”

“I am.”

‘I am’, said like he’d said it an hour ago.

Not agreement, but a statement of existence.  He was, he existed, he was this role.

Charles shook his head slowly.  He looked at the Aurum.

“I’ve walked the line of gainsaying as a result of this misconception,” the Aurum said.  “I’m fine.”

“You set me up,” he told the Sable.

“You set yourself up.”

Charles, the wrinkles on his nose twitching as he held himself back, felt out across his region, trying to assess what the damage might be.  How this might set him back.  Gainsaying.

“Carmine,” the Alabaster said.

He turned his scowling gaze to her, disgust etched into his features.

“You’re trying to change the world, but you only control some of Ontario, a piece of Manitoba.  That’s me showing you kindness, pointing out the difference so you can change.”

“Is it?”

“Me being less kind- being a bitch?  I’d say you’re a reckless man without the ability to control even this region.  You’re going to do more damage than good.”

“The damage is the point,” he replied, with enough venom that some of her people in white moved away from him, spooked.

She blinked, obviously caught off guard by the words and the sentiment.  “You’re not cut out for this.”

“Say that when you’ve existed for longer than the beer in my fridge,” he told her.

“You’re gainsaid, Carmine,” she replied.  “You’re privy to knowledge through the gainsaying.  You must lose more than you gain through a lie, unwitting or not.  Anything you do with that knowledge will only make the damage worse.  Anything the Aurum does with that knowledge will only make the damage worse.”

“No telling anyone, then,” he concluded.

“It would do you more harm than good.  For now you must wait.  Maricica and the members of the Red Heron will attack the Blue Heron Institute without your direct assistance.  You’ve given them some power to draw on, that remains.  Whatever follows, if it happens soon, should happen without your involvement.”

Avery, hood up and wolf mask on, looked down from the Promenade to the Earth.  Her finger plucked at the friendship bracelet hidden in her sleeve.  It was pale, washed out, and still a bit bloody.

Her dad talked to her mom, and she could hear the faint words.  Both were crying.

Rowan and Sheridan were in the apartment above, both sharing a couch, sitting closer together than they normally would.  They watched a movie, and they didn’t talk about her, but it was clear from expressions and body language that what was happening wasn’t sitting well.  Sheridan had heard Avery’s mom crying earlier.  She’d gone from snarking and acting up more than usual to doing the dishes and cleaning up, before settling on the couch by Rowan.

All the way over in Kennet, Kerry had the sense that something was wrong.  She didn’t know what it was, but she was kind of freaked out.  She’d bothered their dad twice, forcing him to quickly dry tears.  He’d tell her he’d come read her a story soon, she’d go back to her room.

Avery’s mom hung up.  Her dad went to Kerry’s room, pulling up a chair by the bed.  But Kerry asked him to lie beside her, so he did, and they read the story like that.

Avery watched as her mom made a phone call.  Peter Garrick answered.  Then he made the trip, going to a Path, out of Avery’s sight.  Then, a few minutes later, he walked into the apartment, startling Sheridan and Rowan.  He knocked on the door, and she let him in.

He took Avery’s mom with him, again, moving out of sight.

Ten minutes after finishing the story and seeing Kerry go to sleep, Avery’s dad was startled from browsing his phone, lying in a bed too large for one person, by the arrival of Peter and Avery’s mom.

Peter left them alone, to cry and cling to one another.  To console one another at the same time, reassure, to tearfully kiss and-

“Oh fucking god damn it,” Avery swore under her breath, turning away as the first article of clothing started to come off.  “I swear, if you guys give me another sibling…”

She had to reach under the mask to wipe her eyes.

“…I probably deserve it.”

Snowdrop’s head bonked into her shoulder.  Snowdrop was also covered up, hood and skull mask.

Thinking about her parents, about the grief she’d put people through, she knew she had to make it count.  She’d been useless and hadn’t answered them earlier, and she knew that keeping that going had to be a better idea… if she could accomplish something as a result.  Sidelining Charles and the Aurum for a bit wasn’t enough.

She moved her hand and averted her focus as she turned back around, arm going around her familiar’s shoulders.

Maricica, making her move.  The Red Heron mentors maneuvering.  Hairs must have stood up on Seth Belanger’s neck, because he turned his head, and she had to avert her eyes before he could make eye contact.

Helen… in two places at once.  Three places at once, as she went looking.  Four.

The Wild Hunt of Winter was out there.  They didn’t stalk.  They didn’t pursue.

One of them looked up, making brief eye contact.

She somehow didn’t think they’d go blabbing about her being alive.

It seemed inelegant, as Lucy had put it.

“But why aren’t you hunting?” Avery asked, quiet.

Had they been bought off?  That didn’t seem to make sense.

Avery went looking, and she realized she might know why.

“Want to head out?”

“Nah,” Snowdrop said.  “Want to lie around more like we were doing.  Except if your hip hurts, I want to exercise that, really walk it off.”

Avery shifted her weight, swinging her leg a bit.  “It’s okay.  My gut feels like lead though.”

Snowdrop nodded.

Avery looked back and down, to look in on her siblings one last time, then she turned to Snowdrop.  “Did you figure your way around some?  When you were trying to find a good way from me to here?”

“Lots,” Snowdrop replied.

“Lots,” Avery replied.  “Okay, well, I think our best bet is to find someplace familiar.”

“Where?” Snowdrop asked.

The Build Up creaked.  Avery leaned into the railing that overlooked crashing seas, watching the tall building get pieced together.  The top floor was built as the bottom one was washed away with sweeping tidal waves.  Birds large and small carried platforms and equipment to drop off.

“Ave,” Snowdrop said.  “You know this practice is really good to stick with?  You can make it an expert thing, get really clear visions…”

The Gate of Ivory.

Avery used it, closing her eyes, and then opened them.

The Build Up was burning up, a fire eating the bottom floors while others struggled to build the upper floors.  Every minute or two, the bottom floor would get too weak from the fire and come crashing down.  Fire truck ladders that were supplying water were also supplying the materials for higher floors, while others came down on chains.

“Especially when your Self is worn out.  That’s the best time, makes this like working out with sandbags strapped to you,” Snowdrop said.

Avery redrew the diagram.  Gate of Ivory, again.

The Build Up was a giant play structure, with colorful panels to walk on, and a mingling of more colorful panels, plastic beams and shafts, and painted bars and pipes.  Plastic power tools sawed through and wrecked the bottom floor.  The construction vehicles looked like kids’ toys, in bright primary colors, with rounded edges.  They carried away the debris, and they brought more in.  Ropes in primary blues, yellows, and oranges lowered things down from overcast clouds.  Below, instead of fire or water, it was a million-foot drop to a playground sandbox, somehow.

“But I’m smart,” Snowdrop said.  “Listen to me.”

“No, you’re right,” Avery replied, absently.

She went to write a new diagram, and she saw a trace of wiggle at the edges.  Something undefinable that told her something was wrong, but nothing she could put her finger on.

“But I have to figure out a way to make this all worth it,” she told Snowdrop.

She drew the rune again, closing her eyes.

Last time, she thought.

No, if this doesn’t work, maybe one more time.

She needed to make this worth her parent’s tears.  Her friend’s.

She opened her eyes.

A sea of junk and scrap metal, car parts and other machinery that didn’t make sense… from a human perspective at least.  Broken Lost machines, from other paths, filtering through her from this one peculiar angle.  The building was a giant robot, shadowy and kind of creepy in the distance.  Machines collected and moved debris, while pieces were moved into place.  The robot’s head became the torso, became the stomach, divided to be the legs…

Avery took it all in.

“There we go,” she said.  “That’s what we were after.”

“Are we using a giant robot to fight a goddess?” Snowdrop asked, with awe in her voice.  “That’s so lame.”

“Ha.  I wish we could,” Avery replied.  “Doesn’t work like that.”

She took a moment to let her sanity heal.  Things danced at the edges of her vision, and things didn’t feel consistent as she looked at something, looked away, and looked back.

Snowdrop reached out, and Avery didn’t complain.

Sharing this little burden.  Soothing.

“Food doesn’t help with crap like this,” Snowdrop muttered.

“You took damn good care of me, Snow, so I’m not about to argue.”

Avery dug for a packed lunch she’d bought with painted coins.  She passed some to Snowdrop.

Nourishing the Self with good food.

Idly, not even really thinking, maybe because of the Gate of Ivory, and because the pages were open on her notebook, the Gates of Horn and Ivory drawn on printer paper she’d punched holes into, printed text spelling it all out…

She drew the gate of Horn.

She wasn’t sure what she was after, but…

She could see through Verona’s eyes.

They were fighting.

Faintly, she could feel movement.  Like whoever or whatever was also behind Verona’s eyes was moving- sliding into place behind her own.

She quickly smudged the diagram, then tore it.

She couldn’t afford to give things away, not when she was close.  Maybe.

They were fighting, they were moving.  They were moving through the Undercity.  Fighting Maricica’s people, which meant…

Avery hurried from a sitting position she hadn’t even realized she’d adopted to her feet.  She swayed, which was dangerous, this close to the edge.  About five thousand feet below the leaping-off point for the Build Up was a sea of torn and twisted scrap metal and machine parts.

This wasn’t a good situation to be fighting in.

They were surrounded by goons, adults in strength and reach, and they couldn’t practice.

Not overtly.

The argument between Maricica and Alabaster was ongoing, as Verona fought to not get pulled away from the group of friendly-to-neutral people and into the crowd of zealous brutes and thugs who were reckless enough to think worshiping Maricica was a good call.

McCauleigh tried to help, but there were people coming from eight different directions and McCauleigh could cover, like, four.  Which was amazing, but it was four out of eight.

Julette could cover another two.  Verona the last couple.

Someone grabbing at Verona hooked a finger on the loop of cloth with a button securing it down near the end of her sleeve.  She was pulled two steps closer- it looked like it hurt his finger too.  The button snapped off, and she fought to avoid getting pulled in.  A fist gripped her hair at the back.

Julette swiped with fingernails and cut like she had cat claws.  The person let go.

“You have your armies gathered like knives to my throat,” the Assembly said.

“Succinctly put.  It doesn’t change how sound my arguments are or aren’t,” Maricica answered.  “If it affects your judgment, I won’t complain.”

“You say the religion doesn’t make the church!” Lucy shouted.  She was fighting back a group as best as she could while also arguing.  She stumbled over a broken pew that was hard to see in the dark.  “So what even is a church?”

“I was asking you earlier and you couldn’t come to a decision.  The church is fundamentally meaningless,” Maricica said.

“It was assigned meaning at the Sword Moot,” the Alabaster said.

“It was denied meaning before then.  This building was occupied by squatters, by partiers, it was spray painted, pissed and shat in.  Pages were torn from books and used to wipe asses.  Teenagers rutted like base animals in here,” Maricica answered.  “It didn’t have precious meaning, it didn’t draw community or respect.  Nobody bothered to protect it.  It was granted new meaning through me, my presence, and I hereby revoke that presence and meaning.”

“You’re still here!” Lucy shouted.

“And you are flailing,” Maricica answered.

“And you are trying to complicate something very simple!” Verona shouted.  “Sorry for butting in, Luce.”

“Why be sorry?  What the fuck is with you guys?  We need to talk priorities.” Lucy said.

“What did people call it before?” Verona asked.  “The church.  When they were making plans to have teenager fun time, did they say hey, let’s meet in that weird building with the fancy stuff on it, or did they say they’d meet in the church!?”

“The latter,” the Alabaster said.

“And when it’s rubble,” Maricica retorted.  “Will it be a church anymore?  Will they say, let’s walk past that church, or will they say let’s walk past the ruins?”

“It was a fucking church when you hurt Melissa Oakham despite sanctuary!” Lucy shouted.

“We walk a line of meaning,” Maricica said.  “Meaning by letter and logic, meaning by sentiment.  A church because of shorthand, or a church because of the power afforded it.  It’s on its way to being rubble, I was not adequately answered earlier.  If we stand in that gray area-”

“-Then you stand in the wrong,” the Alabaster told Maricica.

“Debatable, and only slightly, even if you’re right.”

“Still.  You were wrong to do as you did.”

“I’ll appeal that, and earn what I lost and then some.”

“As is your right.  In the meantime… keeping in mind you’re likely to appeal.  Keeping in mind you’re likely to even win…”

Maricica smiled.

“A mild punishment holds up in the face of appeal better,” the Alabaster Assembly said.

“She needs to heal Oakham.  All the way, without taking claim over her,” Lucy said.

“Easily done,” Maricica said.

There was a plot, maybe, that went beyond it.  Were they being surrounded, even as they dealt with all of this?

“We get to leave!” Verona shouted.  “As Sanctuary allows.”

“That, I cannot grant,” Maricica said.  “Because it would acknowledge sanctuary, and I’ve made my case by denying it.  No.”

“No,” the Alabaster Assembly agreed.  “I will weaken you, Blood Goddess Maricica, for a matter of minutes.  You must also see to Melissa Oakham’s ankle, healing it to perfect condition.”

She’s weak, Verona thought.

“Protect me,” Maricica told the room.

And those words, from their goddess, gave the zealots all the reason to keep fighting.

Verona threw herself to the ground, letting Julette cover her, while she quickly got an arrangement of sticks.  She’d need to go big and powerful.

Enginehead, she thought.  She dragged an ‘x’ shape into her chest, and pressed the sticks to it.  Come on.  Let’s keep it subtle.

Engine oil surged into her veins, then seemed to ignite, becoming something combustible.  Her eyes snapped open, her heart revving up.  She let out a growl that wasn’t entirely human or animal.  A machine sound.

Julette and McCauleigh were noticing what she was doing.  Both moved.  McCauleigh elbowed someone back, and they staggered.

Verona rammed into them with full force and she felt her own bones get tested by that impact.  She felt his bones snap and pop as she barreled into him, shoving him into one of his buddies.

The other two moved, helping her, as she ran for Lucy, who was being mobbed.  Lucy could fend for herself, but she couldn’t fend for herself at the same time she went after Maricica.

Blood hot, engine roar in her head, Verona clipped a few people as she headed past Lucy.  Peeling away a part of the crowd.  Lucy moved through, backing up, hopping over someone with a broken leg.

To a casual observer, it would look like Verona had gotten lucky, maybe, caught them off guard.  The casual observer wouldn’t know about broken bones and bruised or ruptured organs.

They had a window of opportunity now.

Verona started forward, and hands came out of shadows to grab her.  She fell, and she fell hard, shattering floorboards from that brief forward momentum turning into a nosedive.

Helen, by the door, sticks in hand.  She had her hands move in shadows where Innocents wouldn’t clearly see.

Hands that reached out of the shadowy areas above and beside the lights the Alabster had turned on, tearing out wires or breaking bulbs.

Giving her more leeway to act.

Sticks clacked against sticks.  Verona felt hairs stand on end.

Lucy, ducking low, swiped a weapon through dust, drawing out a line between them and Helen for a quick barrier.

“That what you want to go with?” Helen asked.  “Who do you think is stronger?  Me with the forces backing me?  Or you with your line and the forces behind you?”

“Who’s backing you?” Lucy asked.

Did Lucy know something?  Because Charles and the Aurum hadn’t showed.  It felt like setup.

McCauleigh crashed into Julette and Verona, as a bogeyman with a pig mask stapled to his face came at her, dogs and other animals following in a herd after him.  She could fight and fend him off, but she couldn’t win the contest of weight class.

Verona charged him.  He was three hundred pounds of brute with some pets, walking awkwardly, while she was a ninety pound girl.  But she was also a temporary host to the enginehead spirit from the shrines, so she hit him in the same way a car would.

Smashing him away, scattering the animals, who reacted with alarm.

Maybe that would confuse some innocents, maybe they’d think he was a lightweight.

They didn’t have long.  The Alabaster Assembly hadn’t given them much of a window.

Maricica, a sea of her people between her and them, including some bogeymen, had backed up to the wall, and she stood there in shadow, obscured from the Innocents.  Mostly.  Enough for doubt.

Verona would only suffer for exposing her by shining a light on her.  She would be responsible, not Maricica.

McCauleigh was fighting her way forward, trying to see if she could forge a path, but more hands grabbed her.

Verona turned, huffing, ready to go after Helen, charging at her, but people moved to be in her way.  More of Maricica’s soldiers.

“What?” Lucy asked.

“What?” Verona asked her.  She badly wanted to know whatever secrets Lucy had worked out.

“Scraping.”

Maricica stood taller.  Then she brought a hand to her chest.

Soaked in fresh blood like she was, it was kind of hard to tell.  But blood ran down her chest.

The scraping intensified.  Verona felt something pull at her, in a vital way, and hurried to lose the Enginehead spirit, digging for salt and smudging it across the x-shaped hole she’d dug into her chest.  Thanks dude.

It still pulled at her.  At pockets and other things.  The damaged building creaked.

“We shouldn’t let this harm the people here,” the Alabaster said.  More lights came on.  Just enough that Maricica remained mostly in shadow, hard for the people at the one side of the church to see.  The building stopped creaking, like the light had reinforced it somehow.

And Verona had a better view of what was happening.

The metal spike that stuck out of Maricica’s chest was digging in deeper.  So deep the head was flush with skin, now.

Then, a moment later, it was no longer flush.  There was a hole.

Maricica grunted, groaned, and forced herself away from the back room of the church.  With the force of the motion the few intact windows broke.  Lights turned off in time to keep her in shadow, even with new light shining in.

The cold iron spike remained behind, clinging to the wall, dripping with blood.

Verona could see construction yellow tracing around a circle shape.  It was hard to see from this angle, but from the way things had been moving and scraping around, and the way things were behaving, she could figure out what it was.

Avery, wearing her deer mask, stepped out onto the sill of the broken window, and crouched down, one hand out to her side for support as she bent down.

By unspoken signal, the electromagnet was turned off.  Some of the trace magnetic-ness lingered, but Avery was able to get the spike where it was held to the wall, gripping it in one hand.  Standing in the stained glass window fifteen feet off the ground, light shining in from the city behind her, she held it up.

So bogeyman and zealot alike could see that Maricica had just lost her connection to the Abyss.

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